Writings on baseball by Matt Barnard and Dan Stein.

 
A few early pieces of news today. In addition, you might notice that I'm going to try to insert hyperlinks into the text as well as -perhaps- some bold lettering. Wildly new innovations, I know...this is progress, right before your eyes.

Remlinger signs $10.65 million, 3 year deal
Okay, so this isn't news from yesterday as the story actually broke on Monday. But it should continue to make us question what the Cubs are doing. In addition to adding the salaries and necessary roster filler of Mark Grudzielanek and Eric Karros, they've also signed a quality reliever in Remlinger for three years at more than $3.5 million per. This is defensible if you've got an extraordinary amount of money to throw around and are really desperate to help an ailing bullpen, as the Cubs are (they blew 25 games last season). Remlinger is coming off a terrific season in which he went 7-3 with a 1.99 ERA and better than a strikeout an inning (69 in 68 innings). But he's also going to be 37 before the start of next season, and 39 before his deal expires. Clearly, there are far worse ways to spend money, and it appears that guys like Remlinger who only pitch 68 innings a year might be able to last a bit longer than their 200 inning counterparts and retain their value. The question that really jumps out at me though is this...with the amount of money they've spent now signing Remlinger and new manager Dusty Baker, along with Karros and Grudzielanek, and since they've apparently decided not to go with Hee Seop Choi at first base...why didn't they make a more substantial run at Jim Thome? Thome grew up a Cubs fan and, by his request, met with Cubs brass to discuss working something out, which they never pursued in earnest likely because of the price tag (as opposed to the reason they should've used, which is that they have a perfectly good, much younger and cheaper first baseman already in Choi). I'm not going to proceed much further, as there are definitely things I'm overlooking here and I'm choosing for the time being to steer clear of really hard, critical analysis of this signing, as I don't think it's that bad. But it does further suggest that perhaps the Cubs are flying by the seat of their pants and really didn't take into account all their options at the beginning of this offseason, when they really could have made some headway. This may yet be an improved team, I just don't see Remlinger, Baker, Karros or Grudzielanek contributing a whole lot towards that end.

Ventura close to resigning with the Yankees for a year at $5 million
As this blog opened with a stated focus on the Yankees, it about time I got to an issue related to them. I really see no problem here. Ventura did a decent job last year (.247/.368/.458), and while his second half decline (.227/.371/.389) is a mild concern, there really aren't a whole lot of other options at third base. The Drew Henson saga has been pretty well covered, so I won't add anything other than to say that it appears that the Yankees are still holding out some hope and as such, aren't going after a long term solution at third. I've heard the name Edgardo Alfonzo bantered about a bit, but I think it extremely unlikely that the Yanks are really interested in bringing in a guy whose had the injury troubles he has at the salary he's likely to command, despite the fact that he'll make substantially less than a player in his shoes would've made even last offseason. Ventura for $5 million is a lot less than the Yanks paid for him last season ($8.5 million) and if he can merely duplicate his output from a year ago, I'll happily take that and worry about what to do afterwards next winter.
posted by VZW Watcher at 3:16 PM -