[Westheim]

I checked with Vic Flores shortly after the end of the World Series. He wore a shirt with dollar signs on it, a gold chain with a huge golden dollar sign around his neck, and had painted dollar signs with eye black on his face. He was looking for $3M a year for a substantial amount of time, and the Raccoons were just flat out unable to pay for him. I would have tried to squeeze out a contract similar to Brownie and Kel ($1.5M to $1.8M), but that wasn’t going to happen. I made a final, completely desperate, slightly staggered proposal for a 6-yr, $12M deal (plus incentives), but he had none of it. He wasn’t going to go lower than $2.6M per year, and - … (shrugs)

And we ain’t gonna get compensation.

After that disaster, the next one rolled along with Marcos Bruno, who was dressed the same as Flores. He came in with a demand for a 5-yr, $4.5M deal. Mind that he’s 31 and won’t be undefeatable forever, I was good with offering three years for half a million each, but eeeh…

Well, here’s the thing. Bruno has won 28 games in his major league career, half of those in the last three years. He locks the other guys down, and waits for his team to score. His K/9 was 11.7 or better in three of the last four years. His ERA’s the last three years were 2.36, 1.71, and 1.44; On every team without an Angel, Bruno is the closer. And a damn good one!

I allowed him to strip me naked in the end. He was offered a 2-year deal, $700k in ’08, and an $830k player option in ’09. If he’s any good in 2008, he’ll void that and we have the same talk next year. I’m buying time here, basically. Buying time is key right now. With Brownie and Kel signed through 2009, our window is mighty short. Kel actually has a player option for 2010, but c’mon it’s just $1.8M, he can get twice that!

I also reached out to Fuentes, Yoshi, and Angel to avoid arbitration.

The real stroke of genius I had early in the fall was with Tomas Castro. He was going to make a lot of money in arbitration anyway, but I didn’t want to take him to arbitration – ever. I topped that $630k estimate and rounded up to $700k, and constructed a deal to buy out his arbitration years and two years of free agency through to 2012 for $4.4M and substantial incentives. You can offer a $250k bonus for the Hitter of the Year award to anybody, but Castro might well win it one day. And he is only 23, too.

Now we just gotta find a position for the kid.

We could go a long way towards stabilizing things by moving Castro out of center, where he did a bit of a butcher’s job this year, losing half a point of WAR, into left. Pruitt moves to first, and Quebell is sold to a dark mage looking for brains to experiment with. That costs a bit of D at first base, but it opens center for either Trevino, who is a wicked defender, or some import (that won’t be Tom Reese, though). That might well be the best plan of all!

What to do with Sharp? With Flores being lost (it hurts, by the way), do we keep him at third? He won’t sign a 1-year deal, though, and he’s our only compensation pick waiting to be awarded. With us looking for a starting pitcher (and you won’t get one better than Fuentes or Boda for Quebell…), we will probably lose our first round pick. If we could land a guy not quite on the level of Brownie and Kel, but a solid #3 with a 3.20-ish ERA and no escapades, and then Watanabe after that, and Boda and Fuentes and Teasdale can knock another out over the fifth spot… THAT would be great!

We have SOME money. Not a lot. With all the extensions offered at this point, there was budget room of about $2.4M available to add players. That’s a pretty daft starting pitcher, plus some change. We also need a left-hander in the bullpen, though. Luis Beltran would be a cheap, in-house option. He was very solid the last two years in AAA, and appeared in seven games for the Coons in 2007 without getting anybody killed. If we can’t find a good lefty on the market, we might turn to him. By the way, our bullpen plans for 2008 do not include Ward Jackson.

So, Flores gone, Sharp gone, Quebell hopefully gone, and what’s with Yoshi? Do I need an all-new infield? Nah, Yoshi stays. His 2007 was so poor, he’ll be a gift in arbitration. Going with the rookies at short (Miller, who’s technically not a rookie anymore) and third (Martinez) will be a major gamble. We could surely use a veteran presence somewhere on the infield, but where?

Uah, decisions, decisions!!