Busy Rangers work deals with Teixeira, others

Busy Rangers work deals with Teixeira, others

04:51 AM CST on Wednesday, January 18, 2006

By EVAN GRANT and RICHARD DURRETT / The Dallas Morning News

The Rangers won't have to go through the painful arbitration process with
Mark Teixeira this year. Or next year either.

In fact, the two-year, $15.4 million agreement the first baseman and the
Rangers reached Tuesday could pave the way for a much longer relationship.

"We feel Mark is a long-term fit for us," general manager Jon Daniels said
Tuesday afternoon. "It is the organization's intention for Mark to start and
finish his career here."
On Tuesday, when clubs and arbitration-eligible players had to exchange
salary proposals, the Rangers also agreed to terms with two recently
acquired players, outfielder Brad Wilkerson ($3.95 million base with up to
$100,000 worth of incentives based on plate appearances) and pitcher Adam
Eaton ($4.65 million).

The Rangers still have three unsettled cases: Outfielders Kevin Mench and
Gary Matthews Jr. and pitcher Vicente Padilla. The Rangers were $600,000
apart with Mench, who requested $3.05 million, while the Rangers offered
$2.45 million.

By far, though, the most significant development of the day was the Teixeira
deal. He will receive $6.4 million this season and $9 million in 2007. It
gives the Rangers and Teixeira plenty of time to discuss a longer-term deal
before his free agency season of 2008.

And, perhaps most importantly, it allowed the sides to avoid the
often-acrimonious arbitration process - at least the first two times around.
The process, which requires clubs to tell an arbitration panel why a player
isn't worth his desired salary, often leads to permanently strained feelings
between the team and player.

On Tuesday, though, both the Rangers and Teixeira were instead discussing
how they reached a fair deal. And both sides hinted about the promise of
things to come.

"For a player of Mark's caliber, and as important as he is to the club on
the field and the organization off the field, we certainly didn't want to
get into an acrimonious setting where effectively we're paying lawyers to
tell the arbiter how little we think of Mark," Daniels said. "We wanted to
avoid that. He shared that sentiment with us. It was mutually beneficial."
DONNA MCWILLIAM/AP
Mark Teixeira and the Rangers steered clear of the potential hurt feelings
of the arbitration process.

Said Teixeira: "There's no question that I love playing in Texas. I love the
fans. I love everything about Texas. This deal was basically to make sure we
didn't have to worry about it for the next couple of years, and if we do
want to do something later on, we can. We can talk this year, next year, or
the year after that, and I think both parties are going to be willing to do
that."

The agreement also allowed both sides to walk away thinking they'd made a
fair deal. Had the situation gone forward, the Rangers probably would have
compared Teixeira's performance over his first three seasons, in which he
batted .282 with 107 homers and 340 RBIs, to that of Alfonso Soriano.
Soriano received $5.4 million from the Rangers before the 2004 season.
Teixeira's offensive numbers, except for stolen bases, are slightly better
than Soriano's. Teixeira is a superior defender.

On the other hand, Teixeira's agent, Scott Boras, probably would have used
Albert Pujols as the most comparable player. Pujols, who agreed to a
seven-year, $105 million contract after three seasons, received $7 million
in the first year of that deal. Pujols had better offensive numbers than
Teixeira.

The midpoint between the two figures would have been $6.2 million for one
season.

The first year of the agreement allows that Teixeira's performance was
significantly better than Soriano's but fell just short of Pujols'. The
average annual value of Teixeira's contract is $7.7 million; Pujols averaged
$9 million in the first two years of his deal.

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