Thursday’s fun
Freddy Garcia traded to Philadelphia for Floyd and Gio Gonzalez.
Gil Meche, the pitching coach’s dream, signs with THE ROYALS for 5/$55. Supposedly. So Jason Schmidt gets 3/$47 and Meche 5/$55. I’m going to make a wild guess and bet Schmidt returns more on that investment than Meche does.
The last three years, the Royals have only seen him four times, and Meche’s line has been decent but not superficially stellar: 5.73 ERA, 2-1, 22 IP, 26 H, 2 HR, 8 BB, 15K. I… they’re the Royals. Whaddayagonnado.
Lilly to Cubs.
Pettite’s going to pitch somewhere.
Luis Gonzalez got $7m to play for the Dodgers.
“There’s probably [only] a handful of guys in baseball who permeate the clubhouse like he did with us,” Diamondbacks manager Bob Melvin told the Arizona Republic before Gonzalez signed with the Dodgers.
That’s an interesting choice of words.
Rule 5 (5! It’s 5!) draft was today. 19 players picked. Baseball America has a ridiculous amount of coverage including the wrap-up a blog and other good stuff.
Who brought up Carpenter? I thought he got reasonable money in his extension with the Cards. You’re not saying his was one of the worst contracts of the offseason are you?
MLB.com says Bonds signs with Giants on 1/$16M deal
Well…In the heading the only LH power pitcher available in this market was mentioned. In the entire 250 comments since, his name has not been repeated. It’s a longshot, but Pettitte has so far only been offerred a one year deal for $12M by Houston. Pettitte is about 6 months older than Schmidt, but more likely to be worth a $3/47M deal even if the last 2 years were player options. I’d rather see Pettitte offered more on a shorter term than Zito even offered 4/60, which wouldn’t land Zito. It’s doubtful that Pettitte would sign with Seattle, but I’d rather beg him and overpay for him than continue looking at the other options that seem available. I don’t know if I could believe hearing that he signed with the M’s at this point though. It might take a couple days to realise it was real.
“I’m more surprised at the stultified dollars that has been spent on mediocre players. It’s amazing to me, because even though revenues [are at high levels], there is not enough revenue to support the type of signings that are being done.” — Bowden
Jesus Motherlovin’ Christ there’s some serious overreacting that’s been going on the last few days. And I’m still trying to figure out how the ticking time bomb that was Soriano’s arm / shoulder was supposed to have any kind of major trade value.
I find it funny that we sit here and talk about Soriano’s injury woes, and speculate he could get injured rather easily in the future, and yet we think he can get more in trade. What? Did the entire rest of MLB go deaf, blind, dumb, and retarded about Soriano’s injury history?
Could we have gotten more then Ramirez? Hell if I freaking know. If that’s the best we could do, would I have taken it? No, and anybody who says otherwise is an idiot. But that doesn’t mean Soriano was going to net us anybody majorly interesting.
I’m not endorsing this trade, but I am curious as to what we thought we could get. No rosterbating either, I just want an unofficial survey as to who we thought we could get for Soriano, and no taking liberties with “dumbass” GMs. Give me your best realistic shot.
#252: they could’ve done alot better…. include Soriano in package deals and who knows? This was jumping the gun…..if this was the deal Bavasi wanted to make all along, why pull the trigger in Orlando? This deal wouldve’ probably have still been there in March. Getting rid of Soriano now makes it that much harder to make other deals with a real potential to improve the club.
#246: you bring up a good point…. every team should be investing $55M in arms that might become Carpenter…
#252 TIF: Jeff Sullivan summed it up pretty well:
A Pirate blog has a different, and interesting, take on the Laroche-for-Gonzalez deal, but it still leads to the conclusion that Bavasi got hosed (I know nothing about the credibility of the Bucco Blog). In any case, the price for even mediocre middle relievers is insane this winter. That includes pitchers with past injuries – Gagne and Dotel come to mind. You are fooling yourself if you think Ramirez was the top possible value for Soriano.
#253: If this is what he wanted all along (excuse me while I go vomit), he may have felt the pressure of the Braves getting Mike Gonzalez instead and not being able to get his prized Horacio Ramirez even a day later, let alone in March.
An interesting choice of words
Perhaps that’s a euphemism for “Luis needs to take a shower more often.”
Oops. I meant “Jeff Sullivan” and “Pirate blog.”
More on Over-spending
Here’s a nationmal article that says what USS MARINER (and its readers)has beeen saying all along. (Please ignore the inappropiate use of the term winter meetings.)
http://tinyurl.com/yajaqm
(Too bad the Mariner balance isn’t carried over to the next year. This is certainly a good year to do that.)
God, how many shortstops in the last say 25 years were named Uribe? Another one, 47-year old Jose was killed early this morning when his SUV crashed.