[Westheim]

A few days after the season ended, Kisho Saito hurt his knee while reportedly chasing his girlfriend around the beach. It wasn’t a big deal apart for one thing. Since when did he have a girlfriend? Everybody knew he had a SWORD, but … huh.

Once we officially hit the offseason on October 24, the really bad news started coming.

The first one came from Raimundo Beato, who voided his player option for 1995, trying to get a huge contract on the free agent market. Well, this bodes well for us … Beato is 132-118 with a 3.64 ERA for his career. He was here for three years, accumulating a 28-27 record with a 3.34 ERA. Talk about run support.

Second instance of bad news, coming from the owner: I have to take a 5% budget cut, down from about $16.2M to $15.5M. Now, that is going to spell real trouble…

So. All of a sudden we are going to lose a starting pitcher that was penciled in for the #2 or #3 slot AND get the money attached to his contract taken away. The winter could not possibly start more terrible.

Third bad news: we have the #13 pick in next year’s draft, and thus do NOT have a protected pick. Out of four teams tied for picks #11-#14, we were assigned in the worse half. Sigh.

Well, let’s start business by looking at our arbitration screen. We have 11 players on there that have to be dealt with, seven that are arbitration eligible, and four that are bound to be free agents.

The latter group can be quickly dealt with. It includes Beato, plus Mark Allen, Grant West, and Daniel Hall. We will not make an offer to Beato now, who has $$$ in his eyes, but we will offer arbitration, since he is a type B free agent. We will not make an offer to Mark Allen, who just genuinely sucked his way to $1.9M out of our coffers the last two years. He’s washed up. We will also not make an offer to Daniel Hall, who is 39 and has gone as far as his body would take him, plus one year. My heart hurts.

I do consider an offer to Grant West, who pitched to 9 SV and a 2.85 ERA last year, put posted a 1.33 WHIP. We need a left-hander in the bullpen other than Ken Burnett, so why not? The bigger problem in that bullpen is the closer position, but we will get to that at another time.

The seven arbitration eligible players are the following, listed with service time, production last year, and their estimate:
MR Albert Matthews (4.012; 3-1, 3.86 ERA; $148,500)
MR Daniel Miller (2.144; 3-4, 6.43 ERA; $148,500)
C Jose Rodriguez (2.142; .262/.309/.345, 2 HR, 19 RBI; $148,500)
LF Vern Kinnear (3.008; .269/.369/.446, 13 HR, 69 RBI; $341,000)
CF/LF Neil Reece (4.161; .329/.390/.502, 9 HR, 37 RBI (after being hurt half the year); $582,313)
OF Glenn Johnston (5.100; .143/.172/.179, 0 HR, 2 RBI; $302,500)
OF Royce Green (3.019; .280/.342/.575, 38 HR, 101 RBI; $330,000)

Here you can see three kinds of players. Players I am sick of seing on the payroll, our young stud outfield, and Jose Rodriguez.

Let’s deal with Rodriguez first, since he is easily dealt with. His defense is first class, and he is a very good backup to David Vinson. He will be offered $150k.

Our big boy outfield will be sent to arbitration for the first time with the exception of Neil Reece. Kinnear and Green will both be offered $350k. With Reece, we should try to reach a big contract at this point. He will probably be awarded north of $600k anyway, so better bite that lemon now and get a contract done. I think about six years and hopefully less than $6M here.

That leaves Matthews, Miller, and Johnston. Miller was raped all year long and will be offered arbitration at the estimate, but is planned for an assignment to St. Pete to start the year. Albert Matthews has never convinced me. He will be offered the estimate, and most likely also assigned to AAA next year. However: both are out of options, so it is possible we will lose them. But will we lose anything then?

Johnston. He’s a sad story around here. He looked like The Thing five years ago. He will not be offered arbitration. He’s totally done.

We will not do an awful lot until after free agents will file in mid-November, mainly because we do not have any budget space available. Then I need to have the bucks together to go after both David Brewer and a starting pitcher – not even to upgrade the rotation, but just to replace the loss of Beato. Uh, 1995 is starting early, and starting badly.