FTW

Andruw Jones – Texas Rangers – OF

Noted fatty, Andruw Jones signed a minor league deal with the Texas Rangers earlier this week. The deal gives Jones 500K if he makes the big league squad, and up to 1 million bucks in performance bonuses.

The Dallas Morning News summed it up pretty well:

Jones, a 13-year veteran who turns 32 in April, is another low-risk, high-reward signing by the Rangers. Overweight last season, Jones hit only .158 with three home runs for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and he had knee surgery in May.

But Jones has lost weight, perhaps as much as 25 pounds, and the Rangers hope that Jaramillo can help him find the powerful stroke that produced at least 25 homers for 10 consecutive seasons from 1998 to 2007.

My favourite part by far, must be the Dodgers getting half of his cheddar:

Just found out that the Dodgers get HALF of whatever he makes with the Rangers. So, if he maxes out on his incentives and receive a total salary of $1.5 million from Texas in 2009, the Dodgers will get $750,000 of that, meaning they would owe him about $2.76 million instead of the $3.5 million they owe him now.

Anyways, from a fantasy perspective this is interesting and you should keep an eye on this little situation.

Maybe you’re not drafting Andruw Jones but as I type this, David Murphy and Nelson Cruz are too very solid options for your third-OF position.

Obviously, the Texas Rangers would prefer to put Josh Hamilton into a less strenuous position than CF.  You want to leave enough gas in the tank come September, and Hamilton is bound to suffer playing CF all season.

With that said, it may be Hank Blalock who’s currently occupying the DH spot that feels the burn. Currently, I figure Murphy and Cruz are about equal production-wise and should get AB regardless of the situation. However, one of them should fail.  Texas gets lucky, but lucky enough to turn those two into fully productive corner-outfielders is pretty lucky.  One’s bound to be average, with the other increasing production and registering an above-average season.

Now Onto Andruw Jones:

I’m willing to wager a Taco-Bell half pound beef and bean burrito that Andruw Jones was on the Juice, Steroids, PED, HGH, or whatever and decided last year that it was about time to hit the kill switch.

Enter the Fatty-Era.

Jones does have a boatload of natural talent, and he is the ball-player that used to knock out 25-30HR regularly as a skinny little 20-something year old kid.

Jones has had a full-year steroid free to get his shit together. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Jones return to the fleet-footed center-fielder of old.

Of course if that doesn’t work, Andruw Jones could go back on the juice and make all of his fantasy owners happy.  In fantasy, the more numbers someone puts up, the better.  While you don’t want to waste an early rounder on a steroid monkey because he’ll end up tearing his ligaments to shreds, a late round flier is a great idea.

Is Jones worth a last round pick in your draft?

Absolutely, positively.  He could end up with 30HR in a very hitter friendly ball-park.

If he continues the suck, you can drop him and odds are you’ll be able to pick up a stop-gap until an idiot owner drops Cameron Maybin after a terrible first month.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.