Remember, 1B/DH are the easiest positions to fill, and that means you shouldn’t be paying a lot to fill them.

Read the last sentence of my post.

It’s not just you: Bavasi looked at Sexson and thought the same thing.

Now that Bavasi’s gone, maybe it really is just you; the rest of us would like to do something different this time.

Because Adam Dunn’s OTHER skills when he’s not walking or hitting home runs aren’t that good. For instance:

.234/.365/.490
.256/.408/.504
.231/.375/.476
.236/.386/.513

Two of those batting lines are full seasons from Adam Dunn. Two are from Jack Cust. Can you pick them out just by looking at them? I sure can’t.

That’s not to say Cust = Dunn (Dunn’s the better player, though because of Cincy being a better hitter’s ballpark than Oakland it’s closer than you think)… but there’s no way you can tell me that the difference between Dunn and Cust is worth 8-10 million dollars a year over the next several years, which is what Dunn will get on the open market over Cust.

We should be concentrating on finding the Custs (players who can provide decent performance for below-market salaries, and who don’t represent huge boat anchor contracts if they flop) as opposed to signing the Dunns (players who provide marginally better performance for much higher salaries, and who turn into boat anchors if anything goes wrong). That was Dave’s point Dave’s point back during the Sexson signing, and it’s his point now.

The amount of home runs hit by AL batters has nothing to do with how good Adam Dunn is. Homers are great, but they’re not the only aspect of baseball.

Ryan Howard wasn’t the best player in the NL because he hit the most home runs. Miguel Cabrera wasn’t the best player in the AL because he hit the most home runs.

You’re being overly simple. Everyone here is aware that Adam Dunn hits homers and walks. Those things have value. But you can’t just ignore his awful fielding, his old player skills, his age, his likely salary demands and everything else that goes into projecting performance and gauging value.

So, basically, we’re going to spend considerably more money than last year on a player with similar skills and flaws to the cheaper player (and not a lot of substantial advantages- remember, Dunn plays in a tiny ballpark in the weaker league), as the key to improving a 100 loss team.

But hey, it’s all worth it to see a guy hit 40 HRs! After all, when Richie hit 39 in 2005, and the M’s were still a crappy team, it was worth it, right?

Seriously? We’ve seen this movie before. It still sucks. There’s a reason why Bill Bavasi got fired- he chased after guys like Sexson and Everett and ignored other problems. The fact is Dave’s right- slugging behemoths with bad defense and “old player skills” are the most overpaid and overrated players in MLB. We do not need to start collecting them again, considering we’ve already got boat anchors like Johjima, Silva and Washburn as memories of other past contract mistakes.