Tag Archives: Vernon Wells

A couple of news items are coming in today, two significant ones.  They don’t have anything to do with each other, aside from both being good news, in my opinion.  But, since I don’t have a ton to say about either of them and it’s a Friday night, I’ll clump them in to the same post.

• The University of Washington announced today that Coach Sarkisian has signed a 5-year extension.  His contract now has him at U-Dub though the 2015 season.  This move wasn’t a surprise and was mainly a reward for Sark turning a no-win program to Holiday Bowl champs in two seasons.  He has received a raise.  Hopefully this is just the first of Sark’s extensions at UW.  As of right now, I think we all want him to be here for a long time.  (Side note:  This news got me thinking about the last Husky football coach to receive an extension.  Clearly Ty (although he was frightfully close at one point) and Gilby didn’t receive extensions.  Neuheisel signed an extension in 2002 that was supposed to keep him here through 2008 and had a 5-year option through 2013.  He was then fired in 2003.  That one didn’t work out.)
• The other bit of news coming in today has to do with one of the Mariners’ rivals, the Angels.  Today they traded Mike Napoli and Juan Rivera to the Blue Jays for Vernon Wells.  As a Mariner fan, I love this deal.  Vernon Wells had a pretty good year last year but has a monster contract that he is not worth, in my opinion.  His contract has him making $86 million over the next 4 years.  The Angels off-season have had a terrible off-season, which is good news for us folks up here in Seattle.  They missed out on Carl Crawford, didn’t add any of the main pitching targets on the market, and missed out on Adrian Beltre.  Today, Vernon Wells became the highest paid player in Angel history.  I hope that sentence made you laugh.  This might also hurt the Angels next off-season when Pujols and Fielder could potentially be on the market and money will be important.  It’s still unclear if Toronto is sending any money to the Angels.

So, a happy Friday it is!  I’ll be back in a while with a recap of the Husky victory last night, that I attended.  Until then, thanks for reading!

Andrew