Aramis Ramirez was supposedly asking for "Beltran money" (the new gold standard for top-of-the-market hitters) if he didn't re-sign with the Cubs. And if we believe the market was likely to provide that salary to Ramirez, then the Cubs got themselves an outstanding hitter at a good 20-percent discount.
Whether some other team was, in fact, going to pay Ramirez $17 million a year is an open question. How good this deal was for the Cubs won't be clear until the hot stove league starts to cool off, or at least until Alfonso Soriano, J.D. Drew and Carlos Lee have all signed.
At the least, the Cubs managed to avoid losing the best hitter from the NL's second-worst offense in 2006; it would have been very difficult for them to replace his bat and then to upgrade their offense this winter. The Ramirez signing helps those big three free agent hitters substantially by removing one major bat from the market without necessarily removing a suitor (the Cubs still need to improve their offense).
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Keith Law
