Joe Saunders Heads Back To Arizona

You probably saw the screaming headline: JOE SAUNDERS SIGNS WITH D’BACKS FOR ONE YEAR AND $6 MILLION.

Here’s Jon Heyman. $6 million. As we’ve established. Saunders made $5.5 million a year ago. The Diamondbacks non-tendered him because they didn’t want to give him a raise to $8-9 million territory. In the end, they didn’t have to. As a matter of fact, they barely gave him a raise at all. Remember when Ken Rosenthal said not long ago that a three-year contract was possible? haha

Critical to understand: “Joe Saunders Re-Signs For $6 Million” is not the same as “Joe Saunders Resigns For $6 Million.” In the first one, Joe Saunders is getting paid to pitch. In the second one, Joe Saunders is getting paid to not pitch. That is not the case, yet.

Joe Saunders has agreed to terms w Dbacks on a 1-yr deal.

Being non-tendered doesn’t make Saunders a bad pitcher, though. Between that and the subsequent lack of job offers from other teams, about all non-tendered means is that Saunders isn’t worth the substantial salary of $8-9 million that he was in line for via arbitration. Nor is he worth the three years and $27 million his agent was looking for. You could say that about plenty of pitchers, though, many of whom are worse than Saunders.

Whoever ends up getting Saunders -- assuming they get him on a D’backs-type deal, and not the one his agent wants -- will be pleased with their new pitcher. It’s easy to rag on Saunders for being overrated, or as being the product of an undeserved win percentage thanks to his role on quality teams. Doing so misses out on what it is Saunders is capable of, though, and that’s throw a whole lot of innings that, while not great, are good enough.

Saunders and his agent would like a three-year deal. Saunders and his agent probably will not find a three-year deal, but it is not impossible. As for the Marlins, there’s recent word that they’re not very interested, but, who knows?

Joe Saunders is a back-of-the-rotation starter. If nothing else, he’s durable - he’s made at least 31 starts in each of the last four seasons, and he’s only once been on the DL, for about the minimum amount of time. There is some value there. There’s just...there’s just not very much. I should hope that Joe Saunders doesn’t get a three-year contract, unless he gets a three-year contract worth one- or two-year contract money.