Aaron Rowand

Happy 30th birthday to Phillies centerfielder Aaron Rowand.

Roward is a scrappy (I think its a rule that you have to call him that) player who gives it his all when he's on the field. Because of his effort - Rowand is a fan favorite in Chicago and in Philadelphia. However, because Rowand goes all-out he is prone to injury (tossing your body around with abandon tends to do that). Rowand is also a free-agent at the end of the season.

This offseason's Hot Stove "action" will be dominated with talk about centerfielders. You have Andruw Jones, Torii Hunter and Aaron Rowand topping the bill. Since today is Rowand's birthday - I wanted to take a moment to talk about him.

Baseball-Reference.com has Mike Lamb, Milton Bradley and Eric Byrnes as the three most similar batters to Rowand. That's not exactly Hall of Fame company. Me - I like to think of Rowand as a poor man's Johnny Damon and I mean that with no disrespect to either player.

The players are similar in that they both are excellent fielders who play with abandon but are tough enough to play through the dings that come with throwing your body around trying to win games for the team. They both have some pop in their bats (both players have hit 20 or more HR twice) and they both get on base at a similar clip (.343 career OBP for Rowand vs a .353 career OBP for Damon). I would give the base stealing edge to Damon and the outfield arm edge to Rowand (there are very few outfielders with a worse arm than Damon).

Damon signed a 4-year $52 million deal with the Yankees in 2006. Johnny Damon was 32-years old at the time. Rowand will be 30-years old when he signs his big free-agent contract but unlike Damon - Rowand won't have either the Yankees or Red Sox bidding for his services. I can see Rowand getting a contract in the 4-year $40 million range and I would not be surprised to see him re-sign with either the Phillies or White Sox. The age difference means that the team that signs Rowand will probably get full value for their contract whereas the Yankees will be looking to eat parts of or most of the final two years of Damon's contract. In fact - between the Phillies and White Sox - I would not be surprised if the Yankees propose a trade to the team that loses out on Rowand to take Damon at a discount for the 2008 and 2009 seasons.

Remember - if the Yankees trade Damon (and to do that - they will have to eat about 50% of the contract) - they are freed up to sign Andruw Jones to replace A-Rod's HR in the line-up if A-Rod takes a walk as expected.

Its going to be an interesting offseason.