Tuesday, December 29, 2009

The Damon Market Drying Up

Right now, the potential landing places for Johnny Damon seem to be drying up. The more free agent outfielders sign with other teams, the more Damon's life becomes one of those nature shows where the polar bear is losing all his potential habitat due to global warming. The Giants and Mets have just signed left fielders. There is no real indication Boston is interested. The Cards almost certainly will sign Holliday. Mariners were once upon a time looking for an outfielder, but no longer (and that well before Christmas). Where can Damon go?

The Giants are supposedly still looking for a bat, and maybe they use DeRosa in a position other than left and try to sign Damon. That said, Damon will not get from the Giants anywhere near what he had hoped to make when he filed for free agency, nor even what he would've made from New York had he taken a more reasonable negotiating stance from the beginning. But I can't think of any other landing spots.

I know a lot of people would still like to see him on the Yanks, but that ain't happening. Damon's asking price may fall low enough to where the Yanks might reconsider, but they are skeptical about a player's likelihood of being happy when he's taken that sort of pay cut from his previous employer.

Maybe Boston is lurking out there, but that seems unlikely. I suspect my prediction that Damon will be this season's Abreu is going to become painfully true for the fan favorite left fielder. Damon probably deserves better than what he'll end up getting. Perhaps next time he'll pay less attention to Boras and more attention to common sense (was that 3 year, $39M deal ever going to materialize from anywhere?).

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