Guest Post by Michael Hurta

Roger Clemens filed for 22 million dollars, a record among all arbitration files of past. The Astros offered through arbitration 13.5 million dollars. That all lead to an 8.5 million dollar difference between arbitration offers, another record. And these arbitration people are supposed to, starting on Febuary the 1st, attempt to decide which offer is more fair. They shouldn’t even try, though, because Roger Clemens probably won’t accept an Arbitration contract, since it won’t give him any perks such as not having to go on road trips he won’t pitch in.

At any rate, GM Tim Purpura said if Clemens decides to come back negociations will start at another record number, 17.5 million dollars. That is the record salary for a pitcher, set by Pedro Martinez last year. Hopefully an agreement can be reached and the Rocket will return for one last season.

Meanwhile, all of the Astros’ other four arbitration eligable candidates asked for more than one million dollars. The most was Lance Berkman, who asked for 11 million dollars, one million more than the Astros’ offer of ten million. Lance is optimistic that since both numbers are so close a deal can be reached. Hopefully an extension comes with that deal too, because otherwise we might lose him.

Roy Oswalt asked for 7.8 million dollars, while Purpura’s crew offered 6. I think the 7.8 is the much fairer number, but an agreement would of course be ideal to avoid hard feelings. An extension isn’t neccissary yet, but would be nice with Oswalt too.

Pete Munro asked for 1.1 million dollars and Tim Redding asked for 1.4. Munro was offered 525 thousand dollars and Redding was offered 50 grand more. These are the less significant ones, of course. And, obviously, an agreement would be nice to avoid hard feelings, but both pitchers don’t deserve much yet and these might have to go to the panel.

At any rate, even if the Astros’ Roster next year won’t show any new faces to the organization, Tim Purpura has some work to do, and still a lot of it.

Tags: Houston Astros, MLB

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 20th, 2005 at 12:05 am and is filed under Astros baseball, Berkman, Roger Clemens, Roy Oswalt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.