Sign Francis now, and then if Johan comes back in time, trade him at the trade deadline.  It is a thought, maybe not that crazy.

We will have a rotation now of Dickey, Pelfrey, Neise, Francis and Gee. I think that is a middle of the road group, and maybe better. if Dickey and Pelfrey pitch as well as last season I don't see why we can't get 30-34 wins out of them. Then if Neise can do better during the end of the season he could win 11-13 or so. If we can get 10-12 wins out of Francis and 8-10 out of Gee. That would give us 59-69 wins by starters.

Last season we had Dickey 11, Johan 11, Tak2 10(some as RP), Neise 9, Pelfrey 15, Gee 2, Maine 1 for 59.

Johan could bring us back a lot still. He pitched well enough to get a few good pitching prospects, or if we could unload him before the 2011 draft maybe a high draft pick.

Plus it rids us of another big contract ($24,000,000) and makes us big players for a few years in the FA market.  Along with Beltran, K-Rod, Perez, Castillo, Reyes(hopefully resigned) that would free up over $80 million.