Byrnesing Down the House

Jules: I wouldn't go so far as to call a dog filthy but they're definitely dirty. But, a dog's got personality. Personality goes a long way.

Vincent: Ah, so by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he would cease to be a filthy animal. Is that true?

Jules: Well, we'd have to be talkin' about one charmin' motherfuckin' pig. I mean he'd have to be ten times more charmin' than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I'm sayin'?

-Pulp Fiction

I'll spare you the suspense -- D-Backs outfielder Eric Byrnes and his soft new $30 million contract extension are the pig in the metaphor, okay? Let's all start off on the same page.

Now, does Eric Byrnes have personality? You're damn right he does. There's a reason the main man Sip is such a big fan of this guy. He's been described by Sip, as recently as yesterday, as "the heart and soul of the team;" his influence was also compared to that exerted by Captain Courageous on the Yanks' fanbase. Those are strong words, made by a man known for having his finger on the pulse of a region.

There's no question -- Byrnes is a dude. He's a man's man. He's got flopsy blond hair like a surfer, the type you just want to run up to and muss around until the coyotes come home. He's a wit, a cutup, a card and a character. He's telegenic, as evidenced by his truly awful appearances on FOX's baseball coverage, the ones where he usually sits at the studio desk next to Kevin Kennedy looking awkward in a hideous suit with boxy shoulders. Maybe he can use some of the money to find a decent haberdasher out in the desert. Probably not.

He's also, by all accounts, a leader of men. This is no small point for Arizona, a team blessed with as much young talent as any team and the league and arguably the most, with only Tampa and the two L.A. franchises having possible beefs. You know the names, if not the games -- Drew, Upton, Young, Jackson, Quentin, Scherzer, Petit, Owings. The kids are going to be players.

But there's truly a strong case to be made for veteran presence in a situation like this. I'll save everyone the trouble and present it myself; the argument is that the young players need a strong model not only to emulate and pattern their style after, but also to serve as the face of the franchise, so as to prevent one of them from having to serve in that role and possibly distract or detract from their own development. The kiddos can focus on their swings.

In this scenario, the veteran (Byrnes) isn't only a sage presence within the clubhouse; he's the external lightning rod and magnet for trouble. He's the face of the team. He makes everyone else better by his very presence.

Okay. But the question must inevitably turn to just how motherfuckin' charming a pig Byrnes is, and how much value to extend to the positive surfer externalities associated with his dirty uniform and drawl. Because in baseball terms, the contract extension is a disaster.

(Just to get it out of the way, I'm totally unconvinced by any and all dispositive claims that a franchise's fans will rebel or quit supporting the team when a popular player leaves. I'm a Sabres fan, and I watched as our GM let Mike Peca -- a homegrown superstar, mind you, not a player who's been on the roster for approximately 18 months, and way more established as the face of the franchise than Byrnes -- was let go over money. We all screamed bloody murder for years. And guess what? The tickets still got sold, and the jerseys still got bought. The newspaper writers had space to fill, and guess what? They wrote articles about the new guys on the team, who then became popular. In retrospect, seeing what Peca did over the life of his contract, you could have gone either way on the signing; might have been worth it, maybe not. Given the non-economic benefits of Peca, it probably would have been better to sign him than not. But life, in other words, goes on. And any GM that doesn't have the sack to stand up there in front of the podium and say, "Look, we all love such and such, but this was the right move" doesn't deserve the title.)

At age 31, Byrnes is having the best year of his career by far. He's hitting .301/.365/.491 through yesterday's game, which is a real solid line; he's also added 29 steals in 35 attempts (very nice), batting almost entirely in the top or middle of the order. He's been a sparkplug for a team in first place, and there's no shorting that contribution. (Even so, he's still sitting outside the NL Top 20 in VORP, even with more plate appearances than any of the guys above him than Reyes; it's a good, not great, year).

But of course the question isn't what he's done; the question is what he will do, both for the rest of this year and for the next three years at $10 mil. a pop. And therein lies the problem -- Byrnes is an awful bet, just about as bad as Garry Matthews Jr., to replicate his production.

Why? For one, he's never done it before; his career on-base percentage is still below the ol' .330 mark. The guy's a free-swinger with a goodly amount of pop who strikes out too much; these are not rare commodities. Moreoever, given his balls-out style of play, he's about as likely a bet as there is to get seriously hurt at some point over the next three years. All that flying into outfield corners and diving into gaps turns into broken clavicles eventually, especially when you're suddenly 32. For this reason, among others, he's always been a big second-half swoon player, a la LoDuca -- I'd peg the odds of his batting average staying above .300 all the way through the season as something like 4-1 against.

The Byrnes deal, in that sense, embodies the worst aspects of the Matthews and Traitor Johnny signings, both examples of 30-something outfielders cashing in; in the former case paying a player as if he had established a new level of production rather than simply enjoyed a career year; in the latter ignoring the giant red "FRAGILE" sticker slapped on the back of the uniform. (It should be said that Byrnes is a better defensive fielder in the corners than Damon is in center; Byrnes is no more than passable in center, even with an actual throwing arm).

But to my mind, the real sin in this signing is that Arizona has not one, not two, not three, but FOUR stud outfielders under the age of 25 it could plug into its lineup for (essentially) free over the next few years, with built-in wiggle room for potential failure. FOUR.

You've got Chris B. Young, who's going to end up splitting the difference between Mike Cameron and Jim Edmonds at the plate, but with similar defense and more speed in center. You've got Justin Upton, the next Griffey, to play in one of the corners. And then you've got either Carlos Quentin, who admittedly had a really rocky, injury-plagued Age-24 season, or young Carlos Gonzalez to plug into the other corner. Quentin, mind you, was rated the top prospect in the system for three years running; he hit .208 this year, but is an excellent bet to rebound. And Gonzalez is slugging .500 in AA ball as a 21-year-old. These are talented guys.



And they cost nothing. NUFFING. Shit, in this situation, all you needed to do was wind them up and let them become the new DiMaggio/Keller/Henrich.

What else might a team do with $10 million per year over the next three years? It's a fair question. This year's crop of free agents is pretty brutal, especially on the pitching side. If you're Arizona, you've got no obvious position player needs; maybe a third baseman, perhaps a look at a veteran backup catcher, but nothing pressing.

But on the pitching side, you've got a huge question mark dangling around the neck of Randy Johnson, who may or may not just flat-out retire and create a huge hole in your rotation. Livan Hernandez is a free agent. Right now, your rotation looks like this for 2008:

1) Brandon Webb, 29, stud
2) Doug Davis, 32, solid innings muncher
3) Micah Owings, 25, ?
4) Yusmeiro Petit, 23, ?
5) Max Scherzer, 24, 0 MLB innings

So, there's a need for a starter there. You can re-sign Livan with your RJ insurance money. You can throw some cash at your old hoss, Curt Schilling, who might enjoy coming back to his old Arizona home. I'm not totally averse to spending $9 mil. for a year of Freddy Garcia. You can trade an excess infielder (or outfielder, were one so inclined) for someone else. Or you can hold onto the cash, which doesn't, in fact, spoil.

The point in all of this is that you can't let the market play you, and the D-Backs, at a slightly more reasonable length of three years, let themselves be played, probably more so in the Public Reaction market than the baseball realm. I'm more exercised about this than I probably should be, given that a $30 million gift couldn't happen to a nicer guy, and that a Byrnes-Young-Upton outfield is still as exciting as it gets.

But when Byrnes is hitting .240 at the All-Star Break next year, and Quentin has 20 homers for whatever team he gets dealt to for 45 cents on the dollar, remember you heard it here first. He'd better start watching "Green Acres" now.