This Is So Wrong

Reds GM Walt Jocketty confirmed today that the team has offered Johnny Gomes a minor league deal for 2010.  There is just something so wrong about Gomes not getting offered anything more than a minor league deal after the year he had in 2009.

Aside from hitting 20 HRs in 281 ABs and posting an .879 OPS last year, Gomes now has a career major league OPS of .801.  On top of that, he’ll only be 29 in 2010, so there’s no good reason to think he can’t match or better his career OPS in 2010.

Yes, he doesn’t hit for much of an average, and he strikes out a lot, and he’s a defensive liability in the outfield.  Still, he’s a right-handed hitter who hits lefties hard, and he’s hit 28 homeruns for every 500 major league ABs in his career.  Hard to believe that not one major league team would offer him a guaranteed deal in the $750,000 to $950,000 range, to have him come off the bench for them in 2010.

Like everything else in the U.S., things are determined by the current state of the market involved, whether or not it really makes any sense.  Right-handed hitting bench players still in their prime of their careers with career OPS numbers at .800 or higher just aren’t that common; yet in the present market, a lot of major league caliber players are being forced to take minor league contracts.

Much of life is cyclical.  In a few years, when the national economy is booming again, major league teams will be falling all over themselves to offer players guaranteed two-year $5 million contracts for the kind of season Gomes had in 2009.  Let’s hope Gomes is still around then to enjoy it.