howry had two very solid seasons before he turned into an old man and sucked. eyre had a career 1.5 whip when the cubs signed him; his 2005 season was just an extreme outlier. grabow also was lousy and had poor command. i always thought the whole "never sign relievers, they're unreliable" thing was bull [expletive] because there are some relievers who are good year to year. the issue is looking at moronic stuff like ERA when signing a reliever. if you want to bring in marginal pitchers like grabow or eyre, fine, but do it on a single year contract or one with an option year, not on a 3 year deal. that's what they did with shawn camp after a solid year and he turned into a pumpkin. you don't give guys like that multi-year deals.