Wrong Again

Man, you give a guy the benefit of the doubt, and this is how he repays you. Yesterday, I said we could expect Dr. Phil to start griping about Derrek Lee’s new deal at the All-Star Break. The “unders” win big time on this bet, because it took the good Doctor two days to get it on:

Lee’s new deal with the Cubs, announced as $65 million over five years, is really better than that. It’s $56.25 million over four years when you subtract his original 2006 salary. That’s more than $14 million per season, which puts Lee above guys like Paul Konerko and Richie Sexson, whose deals once seemed like a reasonable target.

Only 16 players entered this year making more than $14 million. None of them are as minimally decorated as Lee, and several of them – including Jason Giambi, Jeff Bagwell, Andy Pettitte, Chan Ho Park, Mike Hampton, Lance Berkman, and Jim Thome – turned into dubious investments for the teams signing them because of injuries or diminished performance.

In these two short paragraphs, Dr. Phil takes his Rogic to an extreme. First, he uses some creative math to inflate Lee’s average sale. Then, he goes out of his way to point out that Lee isn’t as good as the other guys making the same (inflated) average salary. Just to put the “slam” into slam dunk, he finishes by mentioning how many of those other, better players have been decorated by many, many trips to the DL (or aren’t as good as Lee, even though they are much more sumptuously decorated than he is).

And, in classic journamalist fashion, Dr. Phil has it both ways. After calling Lee overpaid and minimally decorated, he hastens to add that “Lee is also the right man” who is a “dependable leader in the clubhouse.” Yes, Dr. Phil might be hack, but he knows he can’t burn all his bridges with Lee. After all, he might need to get a sound bite from Lee to build a column around sometime this season…