Gonzalez had a fantastic year at the plate (.336/.376/.598, 143 OPS+), but I am curious why he signed this deal, particularly since Scott Boras is his agent. Seems a bit fishy to me. Could it be that Boras did not wish to risk a year or two of regression for Gonzalez? Possibly. It's unlikely that he will top his 2010 at the plate. Gonzalez led the National League with a .384 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) last year, which is about 84 points higher than league average. Even compared to his teammates in Colorado, that rate was an outlier. His natural BABIP seems to be closer to .325. What kind of season would Gonzalez have had if his BABIP ended up closer to .325 than .384?
Quite a lot, actually.
Gonzalez falls from the outfielder with the 3rd highest OPS in the league (.974) to the 11th (.860), just ahead of Colby Rasmus and Andre Ethier. His OBP drops almost 50 points to a pedestrian .329 and his slugging falls 47 points to .531. His SLG% would still rank him in the top-5, but his OBP would rank him about 42nd among MLB outfielders.
Now, Colorado locked up Gonzalez for 7 years at about $11.4M per year. For a top slugging outfielder with an OPS of .860 that isn't a bad deal at all for the Rockies, especially on the tail end since Gonzalez is relatively young.