Or: How I Perverted an Old Critique of Quantum Physics Theory and Turned it into an Analogy for Adrian Gonzalez and Free Agency.
Schrodinger’s Cat is placed in a box with food and water. Also inside the box, but separate from the cat, is a vial of poison gas, attached to a Geiger counter and a radioactive nucleus. If the nucleus decays, the counter will trigger an appartus which releases the gas and kills the cat. If the nucleus does not decay, the cat lives.
(Note: I am not a physicist nor a quantum mechanic. I’m not even good at fixing my own car.)
The cat goes in the box. The lid is closed, the apparatus activated. You observe the closed box. Is the cat in there alive, or is it dead?
According to Erwin Schrodinger’s critique of early quantum mechanics, the cat while in the box unobserved is in a state of neither being alive or dead. It’s actually both alive and dead simultaneously until the box is opened and its current state is observed.
(Read here for a more complete understanding of the actual theories at work, if you care. Schrodinger actually disagreed with this interpretation and used the cat theory as an illustrative paradox. Back to our story.)
On Tuesday, the San Diego Padres picked up their contract option for Adrian Gonzalez in 2011. Yay, he’s still a Padre!
But everyone knows, as soon as 2011 is over, Gonzalez will be a free agent and the Padres won’t be able to sign him.
So is he really still here, or is he actually already gone? Or is he both at the same time?
Should the Padres trade Adrian Gonzalez now, trade him later, or try to keep him for 2011 (and beyond)?
If you are a Padres fan, you should know and understand the parameters of this dilemma by now. But, like the intent of Schrodinger’s original critique, I think the way we are looking at the whole picture is flawed.
Adrian Gonzalez is Schrodinger’s Cat. He’s in the box, the box is his impending free agency, and as long as he’s in there, the Padres are in an untenable situation. They can’t open the box, because they know what they’re going to find inside. But until they do, the franchise is stuck in limbo.
Here’s the problem. Unlike Schrodinger’s cat, which had a 50/50 chance of living in his thought experiment, I firmly believe Adrian Gonzalez has a 0/100 chance of staying with the San Diego Padres beyond his current contract. This kitty’s gonna get gassed.
Furthermore, even if the Padres were to reverse the odds and ink Adrian’s name to a long-term deal, the likeliest outcomes could quickly lead to a situation where the team was back in a bind, and Gonzalez was back in the box.
Most important of all, while it is natural for general manager Jed Hoyer and the team to want to keep the box closed, it’s got to be opened. They can’t wait and let the situation fester, unless they want to replay their most recent dark times. At this point, a dead cat’s better than a closed box. Hopefully by the end of this you’ll agree.
Let’s start by laying out some of the most basic facts for discussion.
Basic Facts
Padres owner Jeff Moorad has already told his front office to plan for a payroll in 2011 which “starts with a four“, meaning a range of 40-49 million. The Padres tucked in just below 40 million for payroll last year, then boosted into the low ’40s thanks to their deadline acquisitions.
Padres attendance was 2,131,774 in 2010 (paid). They failed to draw a crowd of 30,000 or above for any of the final five games of their last homestand, and the lack of energy showed in a season-killing final series loss to the Cubs.
Adrian Gonzalez is going to earn $5.5 million dollars for the 2011 season, with a chance for $300,000 more if he makes the All-Star game. That’s a boost of potentially just under a million dollars from his 2010 salary.
With salary boosts coming for Heath Bell (arbitration eligible, $4M salary in 2010) and Ryan Ludwick (arbitration eligible, $5.45M in ‘10) as well, and the need to replace free agents Jon Garland and Yorvit Torrealba (among others), any wiggle room in the 40-49 million dollar window is basically accounted for already.
Gonzalez’s agent John Boggs has fairly compared Gonzalez to first basemen Mark Teixiera (eight year contract, 20-22 million per year) and Ryan Howard (next three years at 20 million, following three years at 25 million per year).
These facts above are, shall we say, the walls of the box holding Adrian Gonzalez in our extended metaphor. Now, let’s look at some of the possible outcomes.
Adrian Gonzalez is re-signed by the Padres (cat lives?)
Is it realistic to think the Padres and their ownership in 2012 and beyond will boost payroll back to 2008 levels, when the team spent almost 74 million on their 99-loss team?
No. They have already said as much. Jed Hoyer told me and other assembled media members after the final day of the regular season that if Gonzalez was looking for the money described above, the Padres weren’t going to be able to give it to him.
Well, he is looking for that money. So there should be no need for further discussion here.
On cash alone, Adrian Gonzalez isn’t going to sign his next deal with the San Diego Padres.
If you wanted to throw in all the other reasons Adrian would want to leave, including the 10-20 homers he feels he’s leaving off his bubble gum card each year thanks to the Petco Park and the spacious NL West fields, you could.
If you think the lure of the hometown will keep Adrian here, let me tell you something: there’s only one Tony Gwynn.
Adrian knows he’ll always be a San Diegan no matter what uniform he wears. That’s the thing about our town and our part of the world: you can always come back here to live. Everyone else does.
So this isn’t happening. But let’s say it did!
Jeff Moorad slips in the bathtub, gets 19 Botox injections, and thinks he’s Jerry Jones. The Padres sign Adrian Gonzalez to an 8 year, 160 million dollar contract.
Now what?
Unless you want to just magically start giving the Padres a 100+ million dollar payroll, this isn’t going to work. The Padres, at 60 million, would be committing 33% of their payroll to first base. And we already know they want to be under 50 million.
Fifty million in the payroll, 40% going to one player, and a farm system which is lacking any cheap position players to come up, save cost and take roster spots. Sound familiar? It’s the Padres circa winter of ‘08 and spring of 2009!
How long would it take Adrian to find himself in a Jake Peavy-style situation? Coming off a great season in 2007, the Padres inked Peavy to a huge money, back-loaded deal. The second San Diego tanked in 2008, Peavy’s deal went from a below-market boon to a major albatross.
By 2009, the Padres were forced to try and trade Peavy, all while their general manager was handcuffed by a no-trade clause and a contract which was about to explode in terms of guarantees. Somehow, Kenny Williams rode to the rescue of the franchise and took Peavy off their hands. But the black cloud which followed the team from ‘08 into ‘09 basically sank two years of baseball in San Diego.
Adrian was there to watch all of it happen. And you can guarantee yourself he’d want the same protections Peavy had. You can be just as sure the Padres don’t want to put themselves in the same position again. They made a Houdini-style escape the first time.
As we will continue to see over the course of this offseason series of Padres columns, the outlook for 2011 is tenuous at best. With a farm system lacking any position player prospects to push the current group of aging vets and not-quite-there late ’20s players, there are major needs throughout the infield and outfield. Pitching will always be a strength in San Diego, but even there more questions than answers are currently at hand.
If you can see a world in which San Diego contends for the pennant every year for the next five years and makes a World Series run, then you could see a situation where the team could make a gigantic commitment to Adrian Gonzalez and have it repaid to them from the community.
Otherwise, such a move would simply lead to Adrian being right back in the box within a year or two of signing, and the cat which looked like it was going to live would probably die anyway. (Sorry kitty).
Adrian Gonzalez plays out his contract with the Padres (we don’t open the box for a while)
Based on the words and actions of Jed Hoyer, this is the path the Padres are going to at least present to the public. Having picked up his option, the Padres will talk about getting the value of Adrian Gonzalez’s last year of his contract, putting a quality team on the field, and that winning in 2011 is what they’re thinking about right now.
All the while we know that Jed’s really wondering if the cat’s dead or alive in there.
What are the advantages of waiting and doing nothing? You get Adrian Gonzalez for one more season. He may hit a bunch of homers and make some great plays at first base. If the Padres could find a way to be competitive in the NL West again, his performance could help keep the team in contention or lift them into the playoffs.
At the end of the year, when Gonzalez left for another team, the Padres (presuming they would have offered him arbitration, the sensible thing to do) would get a pair of compensatory draft picks (in the first or second rounds and a sandwich round) in 2012.
Given the Padres’ draft history, a couple of picks aren’t going to make up for Adrian Gonzalez, no matter how well he plays in 2011.
Hoyer has lots of work to do to get the Padres back on the field in 2011
San Diego, unlike the winter ‘09-spring ‘10, do not have a “ready-made” team to roll out on the field. They need to replace, re-sign or upgrade their entire up-the-middle diamond of catcher, second base, shortstop and center field. Ryan Ludwick and Heath Bell are both in need of arbitration or a new one-year agreement. The starting staff will be in need of a couple more mid-career marginal veterans to stock up the rotation.
What’s here needs work. So waiting and doing nothing isn’t nearly as viable a plan as it was last year. And there’s intrinsic risk in leaving the box closed (more on this later). This leaves us with…
Trade Adrian Gonzalez (and the sooner the better)
The Padres need players, multiple. Adrian Gonzalez, with one year left on his deal, is a very attractive commodity. The time to make a deal is the winter. Jed, the IPhone is yours, start calling.
San Diego’s most sensible baseball move is to shop Adrian Gonzalez with the intent of trading him before the Padres report to camp in mid-February. This opens the market wide and gives Hoyer the most leverage possible in making a favorable trade.
Consider, for example, the Cliff Lee situation last winter. When the Phillies put Lee on the market, Seattle was able to jump in and make the trade. The Mariners could do so because they knew that either A) Lee would pair with King Felix and their new defense-first formula to make Seattle a winner or B) they could then trade Lee themselves at the July deadline and cover their tracks.
Instead of just having an operative market of teams which think they can take a run at signing Gonzalez for 2012 and beyond, moving Adrian in the winter opens up a whole slew of teams who may have no intent at all of signing him for the future.
Of course, the very idea of trading Adrian Gonzalez would have some Padres fans up in arms. He’s easily the current face of the franchise, the team’s best player, and a local icon who is well behaved and carries no baggage. But is the alternative even worse?
Why “The Box” needs to be opened
Fans are a fickle lot, and they’re often ill informed. Part of this is at the discretion of baseball management, which would rather not tell you exactly how much money they’ve made or lost in a given year, the exact total of their revenue sharing per team, etc. Part of this is because fans don’t understand the factors at play. But in the end, these are the people who make up the court of public opinion, and the revenue base for the San Diego Padres.
As long as Adrian Gonzalez is Schrodinger’s Cat, stuck in a box where nobody can see whether he’s staying or going, fans will make false assumptions. They will think the Padres are not signing Adrian because they’re overly cheap, or that Adrian is being greedy by asking for too much money. Failing to understand the market, blame will be assigned for a situation where everyone’s doing the right thing.
Almost worse: false hope is created. Every day he’s still here in a Padres uniform leads a fan (or media member) to imagine him staying for another day.
I listened on Wednesday to a string of talk radio callers all answering their mustachioed host’s straw man question: should the Padres sign Adrian Gonzalez for 15-17 million per year?
Um, guys? 15-17 million was so Paul Konerko. We’re living on Howard Street now. 20 million gets you on the block.
It’s unfair to ask the Padres to publicly negotiate a long-term contract, and it’s unfair to say Adrian Gonzalez should take less than what the market will bear. But as long as the box is sitting there closed for everyone to see, people will come up with their own assumptions and expectations.
Want to puncture goodwill in your fan base? This is an easy way to do it.
Once you get into spring training and beyond, the questions start circling like vultures. Each team’s visiting columnist tries to get Adrian’s perspective on their team, their town, trying to recreate the Chicago Sun-Times mess from the last week of September. Hey Adrian, what do you think about Houston? Atlanta? How about the Eastern seaboard?
The Padres were able to keep the box closed for all of 2010. They had one year to play with, to hope and dream that a playoff berth would lead to goodwill, increased revenue, new season ticket holders and a new base from which they could possibly harbor the dream of signing Gonzalez long term. It didn’t happen. They gambled on keeping him, came this close and fell short.
It’s a gamble they can’t take again.
Hoyer and the Padres need to open the box. They can do this by either trading Gonzalez or by making him a public contract offer for him to reject. Either way, the issue is forced, the box is opened, and everyone can see what we’ve already known: Adrian Gonzalez’s time as a Padre is about to be over.
Yes, Padres fans will say “never again!” They’ll swear to not support the team until…until…until…until the next time they win. That’s right. Players come, and players go, but baseball remains, and you root for the home team.
There’s only one way out of this box for the San Diego Padres. It kills the cat but saves the franchise.
Craig Elsten -
Chainsaw -
