November 22, 2009

Sox Willing To Eat Half Of Lowell's Contract

Ken Rosenthal, MSN/Fox:
The Red Sox not only are shopping third baseman Mike Lowell but also are willing to pay $6 million of his $12 million salary for next season, according to major-league sources.

One rival executive, however, says he would be surprised if a team was willing to pay Lowell even $6 million. ...

His right-hip issues have limited his range and he ranks as one of the worst defensive third basemen in the majors, advanced metrics say. ... [Lowell] benefited greatly from playing at Fenway Park last season, posting a .932 OPS at home and .713 OPS on the road.

7 comments:

SoSock said...

I find this rather surprising. While Lowell's not exactly a superstar at 3rd, I don't really think he's so bad that you would need to eat this much money to get rid of him. Unless of course there's somebody out there I'm just not aware of that they have in mind to replace him.

Kyle said...

Think Miggy Tejada or Adrian Beltre.

Kyle said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Amy said...

Sad. I like Mike Lowell a lot. But I am realistic enough to understand the reasons behind this.

Unknown said...

I love Lowell, but he's not the caliber of player he used to be, and he's pretty ugly at third, and often at the plate.

I'd really, really like to see Chone Figgins playing third and hitting second in our lineup. Between him and Ellsbury you'd have good on-base and somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 steals.

SoSock said...

Ah, I hadn't thought about Fggins. That would be a serious upgrade, and a fairly possible one.
Neither he nor Beltre are realyy improvements over Mikey's BA and HR production, but there's no denying Lowell is near the end of his productive yars, if not there already. The youth and speed would be a good thing and you have to wonder if the huge drop-off in power hitting from Figgins last year was just an aberation

The Ings said...

If Francona got hit by a bus, Lowell would be a perfect candidate for player/manager. He could really do that somewhere in the bigs, right now. He knows the games, speaks Espanol, gets along with everyone.
The right team should sign him as a player/manager. Then he'd be worth his whole contract.