Rob

No, because there's no Cuban baseball player whose last name is Solar, doofus. I used to call him Soler... then enough people were using Solar that I found myself doing so. Now, every time I want to type his name I have to stop and consciously think about which one it is, which annoys me to no end.

I still can't get over how bad this deal is.

Wow... That's an awful, awful contract. I'm much happier with Rizzo, thank you.

There's about zero FA 2B I'd be interested in right now... unless it's secretly 2006 and Carlos Guillen wants a one year contract, of course. There's not much more in the trade market. We could get a guy like Prado, but he's older and already a poor enough defender he's been moved off 2B once. He definitely doesn't fit the mold of a guy who should be anything more than a stopgap solution. There's guys like Brignac and EY Jr who once had some prospect shine... but they're no younger than Barney and are currently much worse players. The smart course of action is to sit back, relax, and let Barney hold down the fort until somebody new becomes available or someone forces their way up from the minors. It might not happen in 2012, but Lake could put himself in the discussion before too long... after that, we've got Torreyes, DeVoss, Watkins, Hernandez, Amaya and others who should be along shortly after. And hell, depending on the possible trades we could be making, that list may get even longer. But there's gonna be a wait before there's a better option than Barney.

That last bit isn't technically true. He's got 2 years and 170 days of service time. So there's still 4 more years of surprisingly expensive club control.

I like Porcello more than most around here, but even I can't say I'd be happy about a deal with him as the centerpiece. Hell, if he's even the #2 piece in a deal we had better be getting back some very interesting third and fourth pieces.

Isnt that OMC's cousin or something?

I HAVE PRINCE ON MY FANTASY TEAM SO I HOPE HE SIGNS WITH THE RANGERS. Yup, it's that time of year again.

I really hope Fielder ends up in Texas. That offense would be crazy good when everybody is healthy.

Given that's the best deal Pena could muster, we're lucky he didn't accept the offer of arbitration. But he didn't. And now that he's signed elsewhere, we get a draft pick.

Indeterminate. They are expected to establish residency sometime "soon." After that, it could be anywhere from 2 hours to 2 weeks before they've cleared the necessary hurdles to be declared a free agent. I expect Soler will take his time shopping around though.

I can't imagine my reaction to the cutting of Rodrigo Lopez would be any different from my reaction to the signing.

Lie about your age... whatever, I don't care. Make me need to learn a new name? I hate you and you are all that's wrong with this sport.

Welcome to NSBB, Tiger! Glad to have you aboard. I laughed at this a little harder than I should have. As to Rodrigo Lopez... yeah. Whatever. Minor league deal for a pitcher that's perfectly acceptable AAA depth... why not?

This is a month old and disregards the Blue Jays because they're negotiating with Yu Darvish. Your buddy is a moron.

I am really excited he's gonna try to stick around a while longer. I first took interest in baseball around the age of 4, in 1989. Near as I can tell, amongst active players only he and Omar Vizquel were around that long ago. Vizquel was 22 and in his rookie season. Moyer was 26 and in his 4th season. Other debuts of current old guys: Ivan Rodriguez - 1991 (19 years old) Jim Thome - 1991 (20 years old) Arthur Rhodes - 1991 (22 years old) Tim Wakefield - 1992 (25 years old) Matt Stairs - 1992 (24 years old) Miguel Batista - 1992 (21 years old, threw 2 IP and didn't show up in the majors again until 1996) Manny Ramirez - 1993 (21 years old) Chipper Jones - 1993 (21 years old) Darren Oliver - 1993 (22 years old) Alex Rodriguez - 1994 (18 years old) I only spent about 10 minutes on this list, so I wont guarantee the following tidbit... but I from the looks of it, that's ALL of the players who were around when the union went on strike in 94. (Jeter, Rivera, Posada, Giambi, Damon, Cameron, Counsell, Isringhausen, and Hawkins debuted in 95... also debuting in 95, Juan Castro, who has amassed 2849 plate appearances over 17 big league seasons while posting a .229/.268/.327 career line. He's gotten in multiple games in the majors each year. His longevity is a mystery to us all.) And I think it's pretty likely there are a few guys on that short list who wont log any time in the majors next year... Matt Stairs may already be retired, now that I think about it.

This is mentioned all the time, but does this ever happen? Isn't that what the Indians did with Pomerantz in the Ubaldo trade? Now there's a trade that could look very, very bad for the Indians in a few years time. Wasn't that only like a month or so? I don't ever recall a guy being shelved for six months to be a PTBNL.

I had pretty high hopes for Pawelek for about three weeks.

"I'm not swinging at anything if Soriano doesn't start making a fresh pot of coffee when he finishes the old one."

I think I'm gonna go dig through the old Jermaine Dye thread. That could be fun. Edit: I thought they Dye threads were longer than that. Disappointing. You did make a few funny comments about how you thought he was on pace for an "easy 40-50" HR the year before, though.

Okay. Less than 2% Now explain to me how that isn't his upside. it's his upside insofar as my professional upside is to become a billionaire, i guess; it's so prohibitively unlikely, it's not even worth thinking about for all practical purposes Upside has very little to do with likelihood. Upside = Ceiling = Absolute best case scenario if a player turns all his potential ability into baseball skills. If your definition of upside for a 21 year old SS in AA with amazing tools is " to i guess suppress these problems just enough to sneak their way into the majors for a few seasons"... well, you don't understand what upside is. All he really has to do to have a nice major league career as a league average starter is continue on the path he's on and improve one of his power/speed/fielding/strikeout rate/walk rate. That's not "so prohibitively unlikely it's not even worth thinking about." And so even your own made up definition of upside has you underselling him.

Yeah, that argument has always amused me.

Vlad (.83 BB/K), Hanley (.52) Soriano (.36) still all showed much better command of the strike zone in the minors than Lake (.23) has also, somewhat tangential i guess, but i sort of hate using Sosa as an example for anything, the guy hit .227/.276/.382 in his first three years; if the hope for a player is to give you less than a win of value in three years and get traded for a fading has-been, that's a little grim And if we were arguing that Lake is a better prospect than Vlad, Hanley, or Soriano those data points might be useful to prove he isn't. But nobody is making that argument. You said plate discipline can't really improve, these examples prove otherwise. And I still want an answer for this. Do you really not understand the term? I stated it earlier. Lake has the raw physical tools to hit 20+ HR and swipe 40+ bags while sticking at SS. There's also something like a 2% chance of that happening. that's been done four times in the history of baseball, so i'll certainly take the under on those odds Okay. Less than 2% Now explain to me how that isn't his upside.

Conor Jackson. I don't know that one really counts. He had been an OF through his entire minor league career until they moved him to 1B at AAA just to get him in the lineup. He spent only three seasons primarily as a 1B.

What the hell happened to Walker? He had a very good bat for a utility infielder and I don't remember him being particularly bad on defense. He just kind of dissapeared after a short, forgettable stint with the A's. He was 35 years old and coming off a sub-replacement level season and a below average one. He also had an awful defensive reputation and wanted more than a bench role near the league minimum salary. Pretty much exactly what happened to Jermaine Dye.