He’s probably going to get somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million dollars or so, for a few years. If our budget was a little higher, he’d be the guy I pursue (assuming the Pirates don’t exercise their option, which I doubt they do). But it’s not, and after addressing all the other issues and needs of the team comes first (ie, signing Jose Reyes and figuring out who the closer is going to be, if we delve into the FA pool), I don’t think we’re going to necessarily have the luxury of dropping someone who’s going to cost around that much. For half that price or so, there are other starters who can be as good.

there are some similarities to Mike Pelfrey in a few ways. Around a 5ish K/9, he walks a few less than Pelf, pushing those rates a bit under 3 but the main difference seems to be that he just stopped giving up home runs in 2009. Pretty interesting that from 06-08, he gave up homers on 12% of fly balls and then that suddenly decreased in 09 to around 7%, where it’s been the last 3 seasons. He’s also more of a groundball pitcher than Pelf, though that rate has been decreasing the last few years too (down to a career low 49.9% in ’11).

Looks like he’d be an upgrade on Pelfrey, assuming all of those rates stay the same and he’s probably around Capuano’s equal if all those rates stay the same (Cap strikes out more batters but his biggest problem is the home run ball). It’ll all depend on the price…I’d probably prefer Maholm over Capuano if I’m looking at a 2 year deal just because of age and injury history, though depending on the market, Maholm may end up being too expensive. And he’s an upgrade over Pelf but my question would be whether it’s worth it to pay an extra few million to Maholm for a marginal half win to a win or so, instead of just paying Pelf 5 million or Livan Hernandez less money for similar production. For a team that’s not going to be all that competitive, it’s not worth it to pay more for a marginal win or so, meaning that unless you can get Maholm at or around 5 million, it may make more sense to go after someone else (unless you think that Maholm could fetch something better than Pelf as trade bait in the future, which could be a consideration as well).

I am not sure what kind of $$$ he may look for, but in reality he should come at a decent price. He is definately a goo dpitcher who could easily have a better career record with a good team.

He’s cheap, and I have fun betting how many starts he will make before he hits the DL.

…and for the minimum but that all depends if he is fully healed by spring training