[mikev]

Crusaders Announce Trio Of Extensions

The Crusaders today announced that three major components of the team had been signed to contract extensions.

First up was Jakob Forest. The 38 year old slugger extended his contract for 2 more seasons, at the same $19,580,000 dollar amount he's been making the last several seasons.

"Really, we had no issue here. Letting Jakob walk was just not in the cards for us," said Crusaders GM Mike Voelker. "He /is/ the California Crusaders. He's never played anywhere else, and we don't ever want him to."

Forest is comin goff a season in which he hit .291/.410/.496, although his low (21) home run figure led some GMs around the league to think he was tailing off. Well, you don't slug .500 without having some pop left in your bat.

Also inking a huge extension was C/1B/DH Tommy Aucoin. Aucoin's deal is a 3 year extension totalling just over $55 million, about $18.5 Million annually. Comin off the best season of his career (.323/.386/.496) and quickly adapting to playing first base, the 31 year old Aucoin inked the deal after he'd been rumored to demand a 5 year extension of nearly 100 million dollars. The deal is short term enough to not be crippling if Aucoin gets hurt or otherwise suffers a performance hit, yet was also enough for Aucoin to go ahead and agree to the deal.

Finally, starter Mario Garcia agreed to a two year contract extension paying him $8.4 Million per season. After being awarded $5 Million via arbitration for making 15 starts, and with Garcia looking at becoming a free agent after the season, we figured that number was a lot better than what we could find on the open market next offseason, and buys us another season on top of that. Yesplz, GARICA.