As in every offseason, the lockers have barely been cleaned out when the rumors and wishlists appear from everyone with a keyboard. Most of these can be summarily dismissed as the well meaning hopes of a ten year old who really really hopes his Jays can get Albert Pujols this winter. Or maybe sign Mariano Rivera. Or Crawford. Or Beltre. None of these, of course, will happen but it does make for interesting debate. One name that I've seen on a couple of Blue Jay blogs, with varying degrees of incredulousness, is Prince Fielder.
Let me say this right now. If Manny Ramirez is a bad idea, Prince Fielder is New Coke. The cost in salary alone should end the conversation. Fielder is a Scott Boras client and is said to be asking for $200 million. Hopefully this is the point where Anthropoulos chuckled to himself and changed the channel. And that's just what Boras and Fielder would want. The Brewers would want at least one of our young starters and two premium prospects. No way this happens. Not even if Fielder's numbers hadn't fallen off the table in 2010 (rbi's down 58, slugging percentage down 131 points, batting average down 38 points). Not even if we had some sort of guarantee that Fielder's knees could support his already substantial and rapidly increasing girth on artificial turf. Not even if we wouldn't be locked into this contract for the better part of a decade. There is no way a deal like this makes any sense. Not for a mid-budget team building itself on young pitching. Let Boston or the White Sox make this deal.
This of course is all speculation on speculation. I have seen nothing indicating that the Jays front office has discussed this, or even that they could entertain this notion without convulsing with laughter. That's probable the appropriate response anyway.
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