Following up on our post from a few hours ago, Adam Everett will indeed be the Detroit Tigers' shortstop next season. And according to Ken Rosenthal (I love the "Robothal" name the blogosphere has given him; any idea who first coined that?), Everett will be quite a bargain.
How much of one? Try a one-year, $1 million contract.
Seriously? Yes. The deal is contingent on Everett passing a physical, but that's surely just a formality. Would negotiations have even gotten to this point if there was any chance he wasn't healthy?
But speaking of those negotiations, we think they went something like this:
Even Rick Porcello is sitting down in Lakeland, thinking, "Dude... you probably could've gotten more than that."
But Everett wasn't exactly negotiating from a position of strength, with questions about the health of his throwing shoulder. And for a 31-year-old whose defense is really his only asset, that obviously hurt his value on the open market. Still, that defense alone would seem to be worth more than $1 million. Fire Jim Leyland details that nicely, in addition to showing how Everett ranked among the other available shortstops.
I would've argued that Everett was a good bargain because he'd cost half of what Jack Wilson was set to be paid. Of course, I figured he'd get something near the $2.8 million he earned this year. Now, he's getting just a fraction of that.
Everett can earn more with incentives, however, which Dave Dombrowski has become very good at negotiating into contracts in recent years, with Pudge Rodriguez and Magglio Ordonez. And it would be in his best interests to meet the full potential value of his deal, as he'll be playing for a 2010 salary.
Hopefully, some of the incentives are related to basestealing, since the Tigers could use some speed, and as Old English D points out, Everett used to be pretty good at that. Of course, that would be a bonus. This signing was all about the glove.
