He's going to get > $20MM and > 2 years. I'm not sure I want to be paying him much more than that for more years at his age.
I agree, except ...
I like the lefty power bat who can punish teams that throw righties against us, so at this point I may even think he's more useful than Morse. I think long term that we should not block Goodwin and Rendon, which makes me reluctant to go 3 years for LaRoche.
I hadn't thought of it like this before - would you sign LaRoche to a 3/34 deal and then look to trade Morse?
I'm with you on the not wanting to have both LaRoche and Morse taking up spots that will block others, but if you had to bet - who's more likely to see their skills rapidly erode over the 2013-2015 seasons? It's debatable - but it's not crazy to think that LaRoche's age 33-35 seasons > Morse's age 31-33 seasons.
LaRoche has a years-and-years long track record of being a 20-25HR, 815 OPS kind of guy with plus defense. Morse has his breakout since coming to the Nats, but his overall track record isn't as good and he's also a candidate for that early-30s rapid descent kind of trajectory. Toss in the fact that he's a righty on a team that lacks lefties, and is at best not very good with the glove as an OF, and I begin to wonder about why we're in such a hurry to get rid of LaRoche to move Morse and if we wouldn't be better off with LaRoche longer-term and Morse traded.
I hadn't looked at the list - LaRoche looks to be clearly top-3 in terms of FA class and maybe the best possible option. I think 2/28 plus a team option may even be low for a floor. Gotta think the Dodgers will be looking and won't want to give Loney another 500 ABs.