Nationals make serious offer to Teixeira

Forgetting the Red Sox for a moment, Teixeira signing with the Nationals would be the worst possible scenario for the Orioles.

Imagine the statement from the O's PR department...

"Well, O's fans, we tried, but for some reason Mark Teixeira wanted to play for one of the worst organizations in the game in a city that's actually further from his hometown than we are here in Baltimore. Mark's decision probably had something to do with the fact that the Nationals offered $4M more per year than the Orioles. To fill the gaping hole at first base, the Orioles have selected Dmitri Young in the Rule 5 draft. Our time is up here. See you in the basement."

is this for real?

the Nationals have money? lol, just kidding. no offense to any Nats fans, but i think that they could use this money to make big offers to a couple of pitchers. this is a bigger contract than the Yankees offered CC. you guys probably could have signed Burnett or Lowe, and then a guy like Ben Sheets. pitching takes priority.

I'm not on board with the long-term deals for pitchers thing. especially fragile ones lie Burnett and Sheets.

you gotta understand how perfectly Teixeira fits in the Nats lineup.

Our need is for a Left-handed hitting First Baseman, with power who can hit in the middle of our order and drive in runs. we don't want to sign anyone that is too old, because we are building a young team, so we want a fairly young 1B who is just entering his prime.

Tex is all of those things. very rarely do you find a player who is such a perfect match for your needs as Tex is for ours.

we should go all out for him, if we have a feasible chance of being successful. the pitching needs to be address for absolute certain, but this is something we just can't pass up if it is within the realm of possibility.

I think this would be a great deal for the Nats. I agree that they need pitching, but committing long term to pitchers is not wise. This deal would bring fans to the stadium and start to build something for the future.

161 Million for Sabathia, 180 Million for Texiera...
What do you think this says to the average "Joe" who is trying hard to make ends meet because he lost his job in the auto industry or at American express or CitiGroup??
I think he's worried about keeping a roof over the table that he can barely put food on for his family..
Think about that when you express "needs".

Originally posted by mrmadison - "we should go all out for him, if we have a feasible chance of being successful. the pitching needs to be address for absolute certain, but this is something we just can't pass up if it is within the realm of possibility."

The only problem is that the Nationals have no feasible chance of being successful, even with Teixeira.

Go back to 2001, when Alex Rodriguez signed with the Rangers. They had a decent offense, with Rafael Palmiero, Pudge Rodriguez and Michael Young backing up A-Rod, but their pitching was awful - their best starter was Rick Helling (5.17 ERA in 2001).

Back to 2008... The Nats are in an even worse position than those Rangers. They have question marks all over the field: Who's the starting catcher - can Jesus Flores handle the job? Who's the starting second baseman? Can Elijah Dukes stay focused and out of trouble long enough to fulfill his potential? Can Lastings Milledge get on base more? Can Josh Willingham stay healthy? When will Ryan Zimmerman have his breakout offensive season? I'm sure there are more.

And aside from John Lannan, I can't think of a decent pitching in the Nats rotation. And the bullpen is a mess as well.

In short, signing Teixeira would be an awful move for the Nats. They would be paying one guy almost half of their team salary and they would probably end up trading him two or three years from now for a few top prospects, while picking up the tab on at least a decent chunk of his salary. Bad plan.