Free-agent market not a HR for Frazier
TODD Frazier is smart enough not to complain about signing a two-year contract for $17 million, which will buy a lot of pork roll sandwiches at the Jersey Shore.
Yet at his press conference at Citi Field on Wednesday there was no ignoring the obvious questions about this frozen freeagent market that lately has sparked verbal warfare between players and Major League Baseball.
And while fending them off for the most part, repeatedly expressing his thrill to be the newest Met, Frazier admitted this isn’t the deal he had in mind after waiting years for the opportunity.
“Being a free agent, this is what you’ve been trying to get to,” Frazier said. “Besides winning the World Series, this is what you look forward to as a player. And to see what’s going on now, it’s tough.
“Everybody could see what the price was — or where I should have been. But it’s like in baseball: You expect yourself to hit .300, and if you hit .280, it’s still a pretty good year.”
In other words, Frazier no doubt went into the offseason thinking he’d get at least a threeyear deal for $30-plus million for some team, but when it became clear no such opportunity was out there, he decided to take the Mets’ two-year offer and be happy it afforded him the opportunity to play near his New Jersey
home.
Maybe he would have preferred to play for the Yankees, where he had such a successful run last season after being traded by the White Sox in July, but all indications are they were only interested in a one-year deal, with rookie Miguel Andujar on the horizon and perhaps free-agent Manny Machado next winter.
After the press conference on Wednesday, Frazier’s agent, Brodie Van Wagenen, hinted at that as well, saying, “we absolutely maintained contact throughout” with the Yankees.
“It was no secret that if we could work out parameters that work for both sides, there was potential interest in exploring it,” Van Wagenen added. “But I’m not going to get into specifics about that.”
Frazier too said “we had a lot of conversations with the Yankees,” but obviously GM Brian Cashman was firm in his position, as were other teams apparently, at least in terms of offering a multi-year deal.
All of which made it a long winter for Frazier, as it continues to be for dozens of unsigned free agents, and he admitted he badgered Van Wagenen practically on a daily basis.
“I’m sure he got tired of hearing from me,” Frazier said with a laugh. “I kept saying, ‘hey what’s going on? Do you need me to meet with some GMs? Fly somewhere or something?’ I was trying to be funny about it, but I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It was very frustrating but you had to be patient.”
The Mets, meanwhile, were interested all along in Frazier, but as GM Sandy Alderson indicated on Wednesday, surely went into the offseason thinking his price would be too high.
In the end, then, their patience in waiting out the market paid off.
“We’ve tried to be opportunistic,” Alderson said. “Some opportunities arose for us that probably would not have been expected right after the World Series.”
Alderson indicated the Mets were weighing the pros and cons between Frazier and Eduardo Nunez, as had been speculated, and may have been pushed toward Frazier at least partly upon reading in a published report last week that Asdrubal Cabrera would prefer to play second.
“That was kind of a green light” for the Frazier signing, Alderson said. Then it was a matter of deciding the time had come to acknowledge the unlikelihood of a comeback by David Wright.
“We thought he could nail down a position that has been problematic for us for a couple of years, in the event that David could not come back,” Alderson said. “That was as important as anything.
“Todd is not quite the contact guy as Nunez might be, but he has gotten more disciplined at the plate the last year or so, and we think we can build on that. And he provides us righthanded power. That combination was attractive.”
Yes, Frazier’s numbers may be down a bit from a couple of years ago, but he carries himself like a star, with a Derek Jeterlike assurance, in fact, that he’ll get the big hit when needed, as he’s done since he became famous at 12 years old.
In that sense, Frazier is made for New York, whether it’s the Yankees or the Mets, and since he wanted to stay close to home, perhaps the long wait was worth it for him.
“It was a crazy offseason, but I couldn’t ask for a better outcome,” was the way he put it.
Well, he did ask for a better one, at least financially, but in a winter when teams are determined not to overpay, Frazier finally decided you take $17 million where you can get it, all the better if it’s, as he put it, “right down the street.”