Market Swing

Power is the most valuable commodity in baseball. Power sells, which is why the speed of every pitch and the length of every home run are posted in lights at most ballparks. It is why the game, in catering to a 450-megahertz world, is cranking out more strikeouts and home runs than in any other era in its history. On average, one in every 4.5 at bats last season resulted in a whiff or a homer, those staples of the highlights shows and a casual fan's attention span.

The top road draws last season were Sammy Sosa's Chicago Cubs and Mark McGwire's St. Louis Cardinals. Now strikeout master Randy Johnson, who finished the season with the Houston Astros, is selling himself on the free-agent market armed with statistics for wins, earned run average, punch-outs—and television ratings. (Astros cable ratings more than doubled whenever he started.) What is baseball these days but programming, anyway, especially with a growing class of media conglomerates operating some of the biggest franchises? Every program needs star power. Pity the Los Angeles Dodgers, owned by Fox, who ended last season with a $62.8 million payroll and nothing close to a Jennifer Love Hewitt on their roster. That's why one agent, rattling off the names of three top free-agent power players, predicted last week, "The Dodgers will wind up with Randy Johnson or Kevin Brown or Mo Vaughn."

In this environment Bernie Williams, the multitalented free-agent centerfielder who has played his entire six-year career with the New York Yankees, presents a challenge to the postmodern definition of an elite player. At week's end Williams and his agent, Scott Boras, were making their case to, among others, the Yankees, Arizona Diamondbacks, Baltimore Orioles and Boston Red Sox. (The Yankees, in turn, were keeping their options open by flirting with Chicago White Sox leftfielder Albert Belle, whose $11 million-a-season contract allows him to negotiate with other teams until Dec. 2.) Should a guy who is roughly equal in popularity to Joey Cora and whose moderately powerful career statistics recall the less privileged side of the Yankees centerfielder lineage (hello, Bobby Murcer) be one of the highest-paid players in the game? The answer is as complex as Williams, the trained classical guitarist who has never hit 30 or more home runs in a season but in '98 still had a better slugging percentage (.575) than fellow free agents Rafael Palmeiro and Mike Piazza, the would-be free-agent catcher whom the New York Mets recently made the highest-paid player in baseball, at $13 million per season over seven years.

The Dodgers provided their answer to the question of what Williams is worth by signing former Diamondbacks centerfielder Devon White, who turns 36 next month, to a three-year, $12.4 million contract. "I feel like Devon White is a comparable player, and he does it at a third of the price," Los Angeles general manager Kevin Malone says. "Bernie's a quality player, but Devon White is an All-Star, a premier defensive player and a 20-20 guy. I don't see Bernie being three times better. I don't know if he can carry a club."

Says Colorado Rockies general manager Bob Gebhard, who also passed on Williams, "We have x amount of dollars to spend. We feel we were better off trying to strengthen three or four positions rather than just signing Bernie Williams." So Gebhard scoured the mark-down aisle at Wal-Mart and invested in utility players Lenny Harris and Kurt Abbott, southpaw Brian Bohanon, centerfielder Darryl Hamilton and an old Carpenters CD.

Boras was telling clubs it would take at least a seven-year contract to get Williams. He has hinted strongly that Williams should be paid more than Piazza, who, by coming to terms before the free-agent signing period began, lacked the leverage he would have derived from officially fielding offers from other clubs. However, no position player this decade has become the highest-paid player in the game without hitting at least 32 home runs (Piazza's '98 total) in a season. Of the nine position players to earn at least $8 million last season, only one has never hit 40 or more homers in a season: Williams.

"Is Bernie going to get you 40 home runs and 120 RBIs? I don't think so," says one National League scout. "Does he go to a team like Arizona and turn it around? I don't think so. Do you want to build a team around Bernie Williams? You'd better have a lot of other stuff."

Chances are the Styrofoam Thanksgiving turkey your kid made in art class looks more like a centerpiece than Williams does. Sure, he batted cleanup for the winningest team of all time, but the Yankees went 21-10 in midseason while he was on the disabled list with a sprained right knee, and he hit only .175 in the 11 postseason games New York won. Moreover, Williams finished 32nd overall in All-Star balloting this year, barely edging the nondescript Cora, a slap-hitting second baseman for the Cleveland Indians. Williams has never started an All-Star game. (Every nonpitcher who's been the highest-paid player this decade has started at least one.) He's missed 18% of the Yankees' games over the past three years with injuries. Furthermore, his numbers are more Bobby M than Joe D. In fact, Williams's totals after his sixth full season (1,096 hits, 126 homers, 566 RBIs, .298 batting average after 938 games) are very similar to those of the capable but unspectacular Murcer (1,012 hits, 140 home runs, 542 RBIs, .282 batting average after 958 games).

Williams does bring considerable assets to the market. He won the '98 American League batting title with a thoroughly consistent season: .339 overall, .350 against lefthanders, .333 against righthanders, .335 with runners in scoring position and .333 with the bases loaded. His growth has been subtle but sure. Starting with 1993, his first season as a regular, his on-base percentage (.333, .384, .392, .391, .408, .422) and slugging percentage (.400, .453, .487, .535, .544 and .575) read like the chart of a blue-chip stock. However, Major League Baseball has yet to stage an On-Base Percentage Derby on the eve of an All-Star Game.

A year ago Boras asked the Yankees for $77 million over seven years, calling the price nonnegotiable. Bob Watson, New York's general manager at the time, told him Williams wasn't an elite player worth that much money, an opinion that still gnaws at Williams. The Yankees, instead, signed Williams to a one-year deal for $8.3 million in '98. Last week they offered him $60 million for five years, which means they have been willing to pay him $68.3 million over six years. Tack on another year at a modest $8.7 million and you have the $77 million deal the Yankees turned down last year. "No question the Yankees dropped the ball on that one," one agent says.