Worldwide Baseball: Playboy's 2007 Baseball Preview

PLAYBOY

2OO7*BASEBALL*PREVIEW

Baseball has sacred numbers, like Hank Aaron's 755 home runs, which Barry Bonds is expected to surpass this year, and the 3,OOO-hit milestone Craig Biggio should reach this summer. And then it has scary numbers, like the seven-year, $126 million contract San Francisco gave free-agent pitcher Barry Zito during the off-season. There is nothing like labor peace to give players a bigger slice of the pie: This past fall, for the first time in history, baseball negotiated a new basic agreement with the Players Association before the old one expired. Also, baseball has expanded beyond national boundar­ies, as teams increasingly look abroad for solutions to their roster problems. Boston bid S51 million for the rights to negotiate with Japanese right-hander Daisuke Mat.su/aka—$13 million more than the runner-up New York Mets—then gave him $52 million for six years to pitch in Beantown. The Red Sox were praised for not caving to the contract demands of agent Scott Boras. Strange game? Not really. In the past quarter century, teams have given out 46 contracts with guarantees of six years or longer, includ­ing 29 still in force and seven that were signed since the start of last season. That's the biggest commitment to long-term deals baseball has seen since 13 were handed out for the 2001 season. But buyer beware. Long-term guarantees don't guarantee long-term success. Consider this: Of the 28 players given contracts of six years or more between 1993 and 2002, only 16 finished or still have a chance to finish their contracts with the team (hat signed them. Nobody can say that the Giants will suffer the con­sequences for the security they have provided Zito nor that the Chicago Cubs will be punished for the long-term comfort they gave Alfonso Soriano. But the odds aren't in their favor. It's not the money, it's the duration. Let's take a look at how the teams shape up for 2007 (in predicted order of finish), with a glance at a long-term deal gone bad for each franchise.

BY TRACY RINGOLSBY