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Goodbye Dicky

January 15, 2009 By Leave a Comment
New Giant Gonzalez

New Giant Gonzalez

The money sponge that is Dicky Gonzalez
Dicky as a Swallow

It seems that former Swallows starter Dicky Gonzalez has signed for the Yomiuri Giants for the coming season.

The chunky Puerto Rican has signed a one year contract worth a mere 30 million yen, a huge pay cut from the 120 million he was drawing in each of his last two years at Yakult.

Gonzalez, who joined Tokyo in 2004 from the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, pitched four seasons of injury plagued baseball for Yakult, with his 2007 season being completely wiped out by elbow ligament surgery.

During his four years, Dicky pitched 286 innings in his 67 appearances for the top team, including 41 starts. His Yakult-career record was 18 wins, 20 losses with an ERA of 3.86. Over the same time period he took home a total of 365 million yen (US$4.1 million) in salary.

So that’s roughly:

5.5 million yen per appearance,
or
9 million yen per start,
or
20 million yen per win.

Take your pick.  Hardly value for money, and (for once) you can see why the front office didn’t re-sign him.

So while I’ve nothing in particular against Dicky, unlike the two that escaped across town during the last closed season (Ramirez and Greisinger), this is one loss that Swallows fans wont be losing too much sleep over. 

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About David Watkins

David is a baseball bothering Brummie who spends a fair portion of his life fretting over both the Tokyo Swallows and the WORLD'S GREATEST FOOTBALL TEAM, Aston Villa.

  • http://www.transpacificradio.com/ Garrett DeOrio

    Oh. . . Agh. The pain. The agony of the void of caring I have about this. Losing Dicky is kind of like having a superfluous light bulb burn out or that extra freezer in the garage that sits empty finally die. You didn’t mind it when it was there, but now that it’s gone, you realize that not only did you not need it, your bills are lower with it gone.

    My only regret is that the Giants only slightly overpaid for him.

    Now that we’ve lost him, though, watch him turn into an ace.

  • http://www.transpacificradio.com David Watkins

    Now that we’ve lost him, though, watch him turn into an ace.

    This is the only fear.

  • Christopher Amano-Langtree

    Haven’t you guys noted that you’ve signed Aikawa yet?

  • http://www.transpacificradio.com/ Garrett DeOrio

    Yep. And that the new uniforms have been unveiled. Just haven’t gotten around to posting on those things yet.

  • Rob

    Money sponge – good one!

  • Rob

    Not Dicky-related, but this looks like a good deal.

    http://www.yakult-swallows.co.jp/fanclub/premium.html

    If I’m reading this right, one of the perks is a discount for non-reserved OF seats – Y1,000 instead of Y1,500 – so it would pay for itself in 20 games. Aside from the glove or cap or whatever.

  • http://www.transpacificradio.com/ Garrett DeOrio

    It is a good deal. The regular Fan Club membership is ?5,000 and gives you five free tickets and then ?1,000 tickets thereafter or a cap or glove or whatever the third thing is, plus a sweatshirt and some other little stuff. It pays for itself after four games if you don’t attach any value to the other stuff. The Premium membership gives you the same discount, but a short-sleeved warm-up jersey and a cap or glove. If you attached no value to the merchandise, it’d take seven games for the Premium membership to pay for itself. (Then again, if you weren’t concerned with the merchandise, you’d go for the regular membership. In my case, I’d take a zippered hoodie over a short-sleeved nylon pullover anyway.)

    I strongly recommend a regular Fan Club membership to anyone who thinks they even might take in a few home games.

  • http://jhockey.wordpress.com/ simoncurrie

    Yeah, I plan on joining the fan club this season. See you guys in the bleachers!