Has there ever been a more desperate, Chris Wilson, Portland Lumberjacks looking move than this? I mean who else signs a 38 year old shortstop to a 2-year deal worth over $10 million a season? Well Damek Korbel, come on down. You're the next shortstop of the Portland Lumberjacks.
"You surely don't want to watch Cernunnos Haberknuckle play short all year, did you?" chimed assistant GM Kate Fiscus. "I'll take an old ass fart at SS over Haberknuckle."
Cernunnos declined comment as I think he's grown accustomed now to being the butt of jokes and promotions at this point in Portland.
But back to Korbel. Yes, sure, he's 38 years old and will turn 39 in May. Not exactly the prime age to man the most demanding position in the game aside from catcher. But he's not been that bad. He posted a +9.6 zone rating on defense last year and was in the +20s not to long ago. Granted there's a big difference in playin the position at 35 as opposed to pushing 40. Offensively he's still serviceable. He'll likely post an OPS somewhere between .650-.700. Yeah, not superstar numbers but if he can play solid defense and just hit some he'll keep posting positive WARs. He had a 2.1 WAR last season and 9.6 overall WAR in his last 5 seasons with Edmonton. So it's not ALL BAD.
"Look, we needed an upgrade at shortstop" commented Wilson. "Yes, Korbel is old. But he can still play. And he's better than any other damn option we have. If he doesn't like it here, he can opt out and leave at the end of the season. If he decides to stay, we're just on the hook for 2 seasons anyway and we don't have any replacement shortstops in site. So it's either old man river here or Haberknuckle. We'll go with Korbel."
Poor Cernunnos.
