Little demand for center fielders

Friday, May 25, 2007 | Feedback | Print Entry

Ronnie Belliard was dealt to the St. Louis Cardinals last season and contributed to a world championship run, but in January he was still looking for a job -- in part because of the incredible glut of second basemen on the free agent market. The music stopped, and Belliard was the second baseman left standing, before he signed a minimal deal with the Washington Nationals.

It appears that this winter, the market will be saturated with center fielders -- at a time when many of the big-market teams either don't need center fielders, or won't be looking to pay big bucks for one. And this situation promises to affect some high-profile free agents.  
 

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  • Buster Olney Buster Olney

    Buster Olney is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine. He began covering baseball in 1989, as the Nashville Banner's beat reporter assigned to the Triple-A Nashville Sounds. Later, he covered the San Diego Padres (1993-94), the Baltimore Orioles ('95-96), the New York Mets ('97) and the Yankees ('98-2001). Olney joined ESPN The Magazine in 2003, after six years at The New York Times, and he's the author of the Times' best-seller "The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty," a book about the Paul O'Neill-Tino Martinez Yankees dynasty of 1996-01.

    He grew up in central Vermont collecting baseball cards and listening to Red Sox, Expos, Phillies and Pirates radio broadcasts, and was a rabid fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He graduated from Vanderbilt University the same year as hoops legend Will Perdue, and ranks among the all-time leading scorers in pickup basketball at Memorial Gym. He claims to have witnessed the Commodores' winning football season in 1982 (although anthropologists have not yet confirmed this).

    Olney also contributes to ESPN.com, ESPN Radio, ESPNEWS, "SportsCenter" and "Baseball Tonight."

    Follow Buster on Twitter: @Buster_ESPN

    Ask Buster a question: Buster's Mailbag

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