If you haven’t heard yet, Raul Ibanez has signed a 3 year/$30M contract with the Philadelphia Phillies.

That is way too much for a National League team to pay for Ibanez, but I’m glad he finally got his big paycheck.  Lou Piniella denied Ibanez a lot of money by sitting him into his prime years, before he finally left and got some playing time in Kansas City at age 29.

Ibanez was in the top-10 of many franchise leaderboards for Seattle, including games played (8th), hits (8th), doubles (8th), home runs (7th), RBI (6th), TB (7th), walks (9th) and SLG (9th), to name a few.

As I’ve mentioned before, the Phillies is a decent place for Raul to land in terms of the compensatory draft picks Seattle will be receiving.  As far as I know, the Phils aren’t expected to land another Type-A free agent, especially one ranked higher than Raul, so it’s probably a safe bet for Seattle to get Philadelphia’s 28th pick in the first round next June.  As things stand now, Seattle probably will end up with 4 of the top ~50 picks, and 5 if Josh Fields isn’t signed.

I’m confident that GM Jack Zduriencik will get the most out of those picks.