John Lackey Signs With The Red Sox. Now What For The Mets?

Then why not at least make an offer to Holliday before deciding he won’t sign quickly enough. Sabathia signed quickly didn’t he?

Plus Bay could DH there

So much as he recognized that the market was substantially undervaluing the competitive benefit of one defensive run as opposed to one offensive run. This was an awesome and even somewhat revolutionary strategy for a team expected not to compete, since the economic value of a defensive run is much higher for a team not expected to compete. Defensive runs, which can also help generate wins, lead to a better than expected record, which will attract interest from a disaffected fanbase. For a team expected to be competitive, this isn’t true so much, because of the “home runs are sexy” axiom. Adding Jason Bay, or a similar caliber all-hit, no-glove slugger, is going to do more to enhance sales than adding the opposite. If a team expected to win 92 games wins 96 games because their defense was better than expected, ticket and merch sales aren’t going to change much. But if they do it by adding a player whose going to hit 10 more homers than the guy he replaced is much more likely to attract fan interest.

Rather, he values players properly and places the correct value on defense.

And they’re apparently serious about bringing back Damon.

The Angels have eight players eligible for salary arbitration this winter — pitchers Jered Weaver and Joe Saunders, catchers Mike Napoli and Jeff Mathis, infielders Erick Aybar, Maicer Izturis and Howie Kendrick and outfielder Reggie Willits — and some were among the team’s top performers in 2009.

Though the players are under club control, the considerable jumps in salaries for many of the eight probably will add $13 million to $15 million to the team’s 2010 payroll.

Combined with raises to returning players such as Scott Kazmir, Ervin Santana and Juan Rivera, huge contracts of veterans such as Torii Hunter, Gary Matthews Jr. and Brian Fuentes, and the signing of Abreu to a two-year, $19-million deal in late October, and Reagins went from a GM with lots of wiggle room to one operating out of a phone booth.

A look at the team’s payroll for 2010, with projections for raises to arbitration-eligible players and those with less than three years of big league service, shows that the Angels already have roughly $94 million committed to 21 players under contract or club control.

Throw in the $5.25 million the team owes released reliever Justin Speier, and salaries for another four players who will make at least the major league minimum of $400,000, and that pushes the payroll to almost $101 million.

So, instead of having $51 million to play with, Reagins has something closer to $12 million, which isn’t much in baseball’s financial stratosphere.

Those are some big ifs, but…In limited duty last season, he didn’t die, so that’s a start.

seems kind of dumb for me. lee is much cheaper than Halladay, and will probably get less on the market as a free agent.

Im gonna need you to refer to them by their hday names to avoid giving me heart palpitations. If the Phillies got Holliday and Halladay I’d just give up and dedicate my sports life entirely to the nets.

without totally annihilating our farm system, which I’m not sure can happen, I say either try to get Harang as a salary dump, or punt on 2010 if the crappy left over free agents want multi-year double digit deals.

Aaron Harang, Ben Sheets, Joel Pineiro, I suppose, for less than the latter 2’s initial asking prices. It’s slim pickins’ right now.

Pineiro, Doug Davis, Ben Sheets, Derek Lowe. All except Pineiro would be cheap, although Pineiro is pretty good.

Oh wait Omar apparently can’t focus on more than one or two things at a time and let many good options get signed by other teams already.

last year, a 27 year old all-world first basemen is the kind of player you should be willing to break the bank to sign.

I can’t see how it’s anything better than a lateral move, considering they likely gave up top prospects too.

Why not verify before posting? Ass-clown

It seems like they’re making the trade because they think Lee will cost more than that want to pay, but that doesn’t make much sense if they’re going to be signing Halladay to that extreme contract that’s been rumored.

Happened on a Friday, IIRC, and I think WFAN was usually the best source for breaking news like that. I remember being in school and hearing about it from teachers who I guess listened to WFAN in the teacher’s lounge.

And, before that, just hearing about the trades after they were actually made.

Baseball was what all the fancy kids watched from their new fangled television. We contemplated the alphabet for fun, and we liked it. Kids these days with their hardball times and fangraphs. Pshaw. You want to get information, try smoke signals, that’s how we did it.