Few thoughts on Judge.
1. An absolute win if you're the Astros because one of your constant competitors for AL domination has tied themselves to a really bad contract. Judge's record-breaking year without a WS appearance and/or title to go with put them in the impossible position of signing him and hamstringing themselves or letting him walk and being much worse in the short term with fan anarchy. Would love to make ourselves a prediction chart on Judge's next 9 seasons - how many times does he break 50 HR, how many times does he play 150 games, to see the law of averages play out on the contract.
2. Shows that they've learned nothing from the Pujols and Cabrera deals a decade ago.
3. I really am curious why the owners of MLB don't band together and say, we're not offering anyone more than 5 years. They're eating themselves by doing it this way.
4. Steroids or Goldilocks balls or whatever, with Judge's height and weight, when he has that first slow step moment come in his 30s, it's going to get ugly quick. If you look historically at tall sluggers (6-6 and over), when the bat speed drops in their mid 30s but they're still trying to pull those long arms around, they can't catch up anymore and the power vanishes.
Adam Dunn was 6-6 and had reached 418 home runs at the end of his 33 year old season, a lock to reach 500. He lost his bat speed the next year, only hit 22 homers in 131 games and retired.
Frank Howard, was 6-8 and hit 44, 48, and 44 homers in his 31-33 year old seasons in the late 60s/early 70s. Bat speed dropped off at age 34 and he hit 26 in 153 games, then only 22 over the final 194 games of his career and retired at 36.
I'm loathe to include Darryl Strawberry (6 foot 6) because of his drug problems and back problems being a big factor, but he hit between 26 and 39 home runs for the first 9 years of his career in a row (ages 21-29), then hit 52 over the rest of his career, with only one season above 11.
Tony Clark was 6 foot 8 - had HR seasons of 27, 32, 34, and 31 in his 20s. Only hit 30 once in his 30s, that at age 33, never had more than 17 in any other year of his 30s.
Life is better with a beagle
