It's been a bit of a surprise to us how many people we've heard complaining about the Jays' decision to let John Buck take his talents to South Beach. (Of course, we don't generally listen to call in sports talk radio, and this weekend we caught up on a bunch of podcasts of the Jeff Blair Show. Which was a pretty fair immersion into this now foreign territory.)If there are any of you who are somehow harbouring your crush on John Buck, and having a hard time letting go, let us make three simple points to you.
1. The contract that John Buck got is stupid.
Three years at $6 Million per annum for a catcher who had a pretty good year? There's no way the Jays should have gone anywhere near numbers like that. (We'd have offered two at $3M/year at the most.) If your argument for keeping Buck in any way hinges around the notion of the Jays getting him for less money or fewer years, you have to stop yourself right there and give yourself and "F" in Economics. Also, if the Jays went into next season with John Buck making more money than Hill ($5 M) or Lind ($5.15 M), we'd assume that this was the beginning of a series of sadly-comic self-destructive moves leading to a decade-long demise of the team's fortunes (i.e., The Gord Ash Plan).
2. John Buck is getting old and breaking down.
Buck equaled his career high in games played last year, after a couple of partial seasons due to injuries. But don't forget that the man squats behind the plate, and has spent more than 5600 innings taking foul tips into his body, and getting run over at the plate, and progressively wearing away at his knees. He's a 30 year-old catcher, and while we wish him well, we can't imagine that he gets through three years unscathed, nor does he equal the numbers that he put up last year.
3. John Buck was only kind of an All-Star.
"How do you just let an All-Star just walk?" You let him walk if he was the best of a shallow pool of AL catchers who were available after Victor Martinez became unavailable due to injury. Let's not make it out like he was Mike Piazza in his prime.
12 comments:
you forgot to add that buck was pylon behind the plate! delgado was better defensively and do you remember how many major league games he cought?
A whole lot of very good points and I agree with you on how stupid his contract is. I forgot he only became an all-star after Martinez became unavailable,so thanks for that. I really do look forward to watching the development of JP Arencibia.I suspect he'll actually get down and block balls in the dirt versus waving at them as they went by like Buck did.
John Buck hit 20 MOTHER FUCKING home runs. Where's the respect, Tao?
hehe Navin with his tongue firmly in cheek.
No way the Blue Jays will be any worse without Buck. He'll be a distant memory in about six months.
I'm surprised this was a hot topic on the call in shows --I guess I shouldn't be.
John Buck is Mike Piazza in his prime?? How did we let him go?!
"No way the Blue Jays will be any worse without Buck."
Quit tempting fate like that. When JP Arencibia gets sent to the minors after two months of a .150 average and Jose Molina takes over as the Jays starting catcher and battle of the Mendoza line, I'm blaming you!
That being said no way the Jays signing Buck would have been a good idea.
Have to be happy for Buck though. A well timed year for him. Spend it wisely. But for the Jays to chase him would have been crazy.
I still can't believe the Marlins with 3 @ 6 per.
This guy was pretty much released a season ago and people were wondering why Toronto was interested in him.
If any catcher were to probably revert back into a "pumpkin", lol Klaw, I would put money on Buck.
My only worry with letting Buck go was that he would find his way to Boston. But he didn't. And now Boston lost V-Mart to Detroit and are left with Jarrod Saltalamacchia as their primary catcher. Makes me want to laugh wicked hahd.
People are upset about John Buck?
I mean, I was ok with him playing the 2nd half of 2010 and all that stuff, but I also thought "yeah, that'll do"
And also, Florida is stupid.
Russell Martin got non-tendered? He could be the jays next Buck except less of a donkey behind the dish.
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