what would Branyan command?

[Kyyle23]

Agree

 

Ha! You would do a standing back flip if Joe Crede and his monster first halves and bad back were signed today

[Princess Dye]

Hawk would go bananas for this. When Branyan was with Cleveland, he hyped him up nearly to Gomez heights.

[caulfield12]

That's true, but part of Crede's value was also playing the field, and the way he plays 3B puts a tremendous amount of strain on his back. If Crede were a full time DH or played mostly DH, I would guess that he could remain relatively healthy.

 

 

You also have to look at Thome's swing, which has a tremendous amount of torque in it...not unlike Tiger Woods' swing putting a tremendous amount of pressure on his knees, hips and back. Same idea.

 

And I'm not so sure about Crede being healthy even if he was just DHing.

 

The only thing that makes sense now is that Ozzie and KW would look really silly for passing on Thome, hyping the DH by committee idea, then getting another version of Thome in Branyan who just might end up having more injury problems than Thome while commanding even more money.

 

Compound that with Thome putting those numbers up for our most hated rival and it's a recipe for PR disaster and oodles of Phil Rogers and Cowley "exposes" all season long, like when Chris Young played pretty well in 2006 and Vazquez wet the bed, it seemed every two weeks there was an article about KW dealing Young.

[joeynach]

That's true, but part of Crede's value was also playing the field, and the way he plays 3B puts a tremendous amount of strain on his back. If Crede were a full time DH or played mostly DH, I would guess that he could remain relatively healthy.

 

If Crede were a DH then you would have a DH who hits .255/20/70, you can get better than that.

[Balta1701]

If Crede were a DH then you would have a DH who hits .255/20/70, you can get better than that.

Yeah, Jones/Kotsay!

[witesoxfan]

If Crede were a DH then you would have a DH who hits .255/20/70, you can get better than that.

 

I agree, that's exactly why he won't be a DH. Part of his overall value was his ability to field, and with that comes a bad back, and whether its in the field, at the plate, or both, he always ends up hurting his back when he plays baseball at a high level, and his value is very minimal at this point and it wouldn't be surprising to see him hang it up within the next couple of years.