Inflation

We received a notice from baseball-reference.com the other day regarding Forest City Fanatics' sponsorship of one Matthew Vincent LaPorta's page on their site, a page which, by the way, is an unbelievably useful tool. In case you didn't know, we plunked down $25 last year to attach our name to LaPorta's career stats, an investment which, as far as I can tell, has yet to net us a single reader. Such is life.

But apparently, the Matt LaPorta market is hot, despite Mister X having clevery nicknamed him Matt "Hey, Matt LaPorta, You Suck" LaPorta the night he hit that three-run walkoff against the Royals. Check out our invoice:

This e-mail regards your sponsorship of page on Baseball-Reference.com.
"sponsorship of page"

Thank you for supporting Baseball-Reference.com. We are writing to let you know that your sponsorship of the following page will expire in 21 days. Clicking the link will take you directly to the renewal page.
At this point, I'm thinking, eh, maybe I'll renew - I probably got $25 of use from B-R last year anyway, right? All those ERA+ and OPS+ I scatter about my unread articles come from B-R. Then:

Matt LaPorta ($95 to renew for 1 year)
$95?????
Really?
This represents a 280% price increase from last year for the privilege of sponsoring the page of a dude with a sparkling 2011 WAR of 0.2. How did this inflation come about? Has B-R's demand been that explosive? Curious, I poked around a bit at the available Tribe pages (Steve Buffum of the B-List snapped up Lou Marson). The fact that over half of our roster is up for grabs makes me wonder about B-R's pricing scheme.

Travis Hafner is $180 (the most expensive Indian, even in cyberspace)
Grady Sizemore for $230 (I stand corrected!)
Kosuke Fukudome is an almost impossible-to-believe $195. Read that number again.
Justin Masterson is $150 (try getting Verlander for that price. Sabathia is $680 for a year. Pujols is the Boardwalk of MLB'ers at $1795 - the only one I've seen over $1k. I sense a party game...)
Josh Tomlin $105 (starting pitching is so hard to find)
Carlos Carrasco is $85
Carlos Santana is $115 (this seems fairly accurate to me)
Jack "The Zookeeper" Hannahan is a preposterous $85

Young'uns can be had on the cheap:
The Chiz is $55
Cord Phelps is $50
Zeke Carrera $30
David Huff $25
"The Baseball Index" snapped up Jason Kipnis, damnit.

The bullpen is amazingly cheap:
Raffy Perez is $25
Vinnie Pestano is $30
Joe Smith $25

The 2011 Indians' team page is only $510, as it turns out. You could buy the Tribe three and a half times for what it takes to nab Pujols' page. Prince Albert must get some serious traffic.

If you're looking for a good bargain buy for FCF, and I am, I feel like Vinnie Pestano is my best choice. Come on, same birthday as JHH, career ERA+ of 133, sprints from the bullpen, allows me to use a hilarious Italian accent every time he comes in. Definitely worth the < 1/3 of the fee I'd have to fork over to B-R for LaPorta. Don't delay! supplies are limited! I could also listen to arguments for the Chiz, or maybe Huff.

On the "Don't Buy" ledger, Fukudome has to be the worst value on the board. Hannahan plays a wonderful 3B, but $85?

If you have decided to no longer sponsor this page, thank you for your prior support, and we hope you will continue to visit Baseball-Reference.com.
I'm going to visit the living shit out of your site, like always, and might even throw a few bucks your way for Vinnie.

If you have any questions or comments, please reply to this e-mail, and we will take care of your request.
I'm much more comfortable replying via blog post.

Sincerely,
[Redacted]
Thanks for the heads-up.