Baseball - Vernon Wells Happier And $126 Million Ri

Toronto’s Vernon Wells is known to be soft spoken and nothing worries or bothers him too much. However, of late he was bothered about his future with the Blue Jays. He was wondering whether he would still be playing for the Blue Jays in 2007.

Wells realized that he was worrying unnecessarily. The Blue Jays have signed Wells on a seven year extension and the contract is worth $126 million. Wells will be with the Blue Jays through 2014 and when he signed the contract in December 2006 amid rumors of trade.

No doubt the rumors must have worried Wells a lot. However, now Spring Training is here and Wells is all raring to go. Wells would like to forget those months when baseball was adrift with trade rumors and the figure his agents wanted could have been too much for the Blue Jays.

Blue Jays’ general manager J P Ricciardi admitted that he was surprised at the figure Wells’ agents had quoted but he never had any intentions of trading him. Ricciardi said that he wanted a team that could win the American League East and keeping Wells would help them achieve this as in 2006, Wells averaged .302 with 32 home runs and 106 RBIs.

Today Wells is at Spring Training because Blue Jays owner, Roger Communications, have been able to increase their payroll in the last two offseasons. This was not the case in the 2002 season when Ricciardi became the manager and because of financial issues Blue Jays could extend Carlos Delgado’s contract. The payroll at that time was below $50 million and now it is $90 million.

However, Wells is lucky because if Delgado had still been with the Blue Jays he would not have been able to make to the Blue Jays’ Spring Training.