The Cincinnati Reds today signed current CF Ryan Freel to a two-year $7 million dollar deal. Freel taking over for Ken Griffey Jr. in CF while Junior moved to right has been plugging away with the Reds, doing a little bit of everything the last three seasons.
Freel, has played all over the diamond for the Reds, filling in at third, second or in the outfield and has now won a starting job. While the money given to Freel is a nice reward for a guy that has sacrificed his body over the years, diving and playing all out, it is money that could have probably been used somewhere where it is needed more.
The Reds are a team functioning on one of the smaller budgets in baseball standing 20th out of 30 teams in payroll at just under 70 million. Not that this is an obscene amount of money that Freel will be getting compared to what other players of lesser talent got this past offseason.
However, considering that Freel is 31 and an older 31 considering the pounding he puts on his body, this could end up being wasted money that could have been spent on the draft or evaluating players or scouting.
The last three seasons, Freel has put up very respectable numbers, (.278/.370/.380) but those are the apex of Freel's talent. They won't improve any more than that and if the Reds are lucky, they won't fall from that.
With that said, skipper Jerry Narron has said that he will try and play Freel a little bit at third to give Encarnacion and break and to give rookie Josh Hamilton some AB's in CF. Hopefully, this will cut into some of Freel's at bats.
With Freel being a fighter is whole life, you hope this new security won't cause him to relax, because when he does, his effectiveness will falter mightily.
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