Prince Fielder wants $200 million as a starting point

We’ve speculated in the past about the amount it’s going to take to lock down Scott Boras mega-client Prince Fielder when his contract expires in two years. Sports Illustrated’s Jon Heyman lets us know that Prince is not coming with a cheap price tag:
No particulars of the negotiations between the team and Fielder’s camp have yet become public, but one person familiar with the talks suggested the eight-year contracts of Mark Teixeira and Joe Mauer for $180 million and $184 million, respectively, are viewed by Fielder’s people as mere starting points. And another person familiar with the talks suggested Fielder is seeking about $200 million over eight years, which would represent the biggest contract ever in the non-Alex Rodriguez category and only $23 million less than Attanasio paid for the Brewers in 2004.
One former Brewers player characterized the chances for Milwaukee to keep Fielder as “very slim.” And one Brewers official conceded that while they believe Fielder is enjoying his time there, they don’t sense that he has such an overwhelming desire to stay that it would necessarily translate to a below-market contract.

We’re fans of Prince Fielder’s. We feel he’s a great hitter with a lot of good years left, and he’s going to be a lot better over the long haul then his daddy was. However, he’s not deserving of a contract of this size.
He’s a notoriously slow starter and he isn’t the defensive player that a Joe Mauer or a Mark Texeira is. He’s a one dimensional guy–offense–which you would think put a ceilingon the amount of money he could command on the open market.
Then again, it’s Scott Boras. And Scott Boras is a fucking mongrel isn’t he? I’m glad that a lot of the guys I like aren’t represented by Boras because this guy could someday be responsible for bringing the game to it’s knees whether he’s just operating on an ‘get us all we can get’ motive or not.
We think Fielder is a special offensive player. We even think he’ll be more of a run producer over the course of the next decade then Ryan Braun will be. But look at the contract that Fielder wants in comparison to the $80 million that Braun got. He’s not that much better.
A lot of people are speculating about Boston or New York for destination Fielder. But we’ll throw a new name in the hat since they’ve got their first baseman. How about Atlanta? Look out in two years for Prince to be making a move to the south and hit in the middle of the order in Atlanta.