Angel Pagan Mulling Over Phillies’ Offer of Exactly What he Asked for

So far this year, the Phillies’ big offseason move has been to suddenly not sign Wilton Lopez.  Now the winter meetings are right around the corner and we don’t even have a big, expensive signing to stand on.

How Ruben Amaro plans on showing his face is beyond me.  Guy can’t even fill a single-A managing slot in Williamsport.  How’s he going to spend all our money on a center fielder so we have nothing left to pay a third baseman in a matter of days?!

Well fret no more!  The Phillies have signed big name free agent Angel Pagan!

…is the sentence you will hear when the Phillies current pursuit of Pagan, who has only received four year offers from the Phillies and Giants report the small gnomes that whisper into Ken Rosenthal’s ears when he sleeps, blooms into an amicable reality.

The Giants believe it is “likely” that Pagan will re-sign with them, just because they keep winning the World Series.  But what they don’t know is that a real championship team wins the World Series once and then remains content to just pick away at division titles for the next few years before the inevitable .500 season.

Yeah.

The guy wants four years with an average salary of $10 million, which is understandable.  It’s a great asking price; I’ve asked for it in every job interview I’ve ever had, and people are always impressed and confused.  Pagan’s appeal lies in the fact that he has similar numbers to competing free agent center fielders, with a lower cost, though the Phillies would be stepping down a bit in terms of speed and leading off (Bourn), power (Hamilton), and sharp increases in Hawaiian-themed local car dealership commercials (Victorino).

Also Pagan gets hurt a lot, playing over 123 games just twice in his career.  He’s now 31.

So, is that not the most thrilling chase you’ve ever been apart of?