Tulowitzki Gets His $100 Million

Who had the first $100 million contract of this young Hot Stove season being signed by a player who wasn't going to hit free agency for FOUR more years. Cliff Lee will sign a deal well north of the $100 million mark. Carl Crawford will probably get nine figures too and Jayson Werth might come close. But it was Troy Tulowitzki who was the first to ink a contract that will provide him the financial flexibility to buy Iceland out of bankruptcy and fill it with dogs wearing sweaters. I dare him to come up with a better use of that money.

Tulo's new deal is actually just an extension which picks up his 2014 option for $14 million. The "new money" is the $119 million he will make from 2015 through 2020 or his 30-35 year old seasons. Did the Rox jump the gun on making Tulo the new face of the franchise for the next decade? Yeah, probably. Tulo is coming off of his best season posting a 6.4 WAR despite only playing in 122 games. He also missed 61 games in his 2008 campaign. So, the Rockies are gambling that Tulo won't be gimpy every other season. Maybe he can buy one of those hyperbaric chambers with his riches.

Tulowitzki has been a blog favorite around these parts and solidified that position with his 15 homer, 40 RBI, .303/.366/.754 line September which helped him garner a 5th place finish in the NL MVP voting. I wasn't as appalled by the deal as some of the other baseball scribes but maybe I'm biased because Tulo rocks a sweet mullet. I'm no scientist, unless you count mixology, so I'll leave the heavy lifting to the math nerds amongst us. The great Tangotiger ran the metrics and figures Tulo will be worth almost the exact amount of cash he's due. So there, Jeff Passan.

Of course, the awesome fallout from this signing is when Derek Jeter holds firm for a 6-year, $2.3 billion contract. What? Minka Kelly totally deserves her own island.

Jeter Wins Again

The American League Gold Gloves came out today and, not surprisingly, I'm just going to rip one. You know the one. Derek Jeter won his fifth Gold Glove for whatever it is that he is doing between second and third base. I realize the Gold Gloves are largely awarded because of reputation, some deserving (Ichiro) and some from fairy tales (Jeter). Defensive metrics are far from perfected but I'd be remiss if I didn't throw down a little Jeter hating. And this time it doesn't involve my insane jealousy about him dating Minka Kelly. Here is a quick look at the top short stops in the AL according to FanGraphs Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR).

1. Alexei Ramirez 10.8

2. Cliff Pennington 9.9

4. Elvis Andrus 0.1

7. Derek Jeter -4.7

8. Yuni Betancourt -9.5

9. Jason Bartlett -10.4

My immediate reaction after looking at those stats was blinding bewilderment. I can't believe there was a worse defensive short stop than Yuni but Bartlett apparently had one of those car boots strapped to his leg by the Tampa police.

I can't sit here and tell you if Alexei Ramirez was much better than the rest of the American League short stops based solely on his UZR. But I can tell you, he was definitely far superior to Jeter's drunken hobo wandering around the infield.

Maybe it's time for somebody other than managers and Derek Jeter to vote on the Gold Gloves. But what do I know? I spent half of the day Googling Brad Penny's future wife.