Just the two arb-eligible players to be dealt with and I lowball them both:
- P Larry Brunke - a late-season waiver claim who may work out as a decent enough LR from the left side. Was on $1.48m this year, we offer $1.2m
- P David Lawson - a horror 3-16 / 5.58 season at AAA but I think he's better than that. Not much, though, if our $400k offer is any indication.
We get a split of sorts here: Brunke gets $2m, while we win with Lawson.
Pending FAs Ernest Gause and Chris Shaddy are let go unopposed.
Tim Torres, Al DeGoti and Vic Ramirez win Platinum Sticks. Vic and Kmerce Kmet finish 4th and 6th respectively in the MVP voting.
We keep it relatively simple when the FAs declare, making four fairly aggressive pitches to the guys we want above all:
We have an early win when Wickham signs on for the amount offered. Gotta love a no-muss, no-fuss guy.
Kitty is a better 2B than SS, which means we are stuck with DeGoti / Schmall / Carl Armstrong at short, but he hit 252 with 14 HR with the Friars last year and I reckon he's got a bit more pop in him than that.
Eddy Fernandez counters and we eventually agree on a 3-year / $10.5m deal that gives us an elite lefty reliever who is also an absolute fan magnet.
Jordan is going to be tough. His first counter adds roughly $2m to the overall deal and looks almost guaranteed to go higher. Meanwhile, the silence from Braxton is nigh on deafening until he walks into my office and hands me the signed contract on Draft Day.
He's a peach, almost certainly our SP1 in a year or two if all goes according to Hoyle, especially with Fleming's ongoing injury issues.
Jordan eventually signs in late-December. Meanwhile, we've offered a 2+1/$8.4 deal to lefty
SP John Cerutti, a deal that is closed within a fortnight. We also lock down
IF Dominique Paiement, an undrafted guy Jim Bishop liked the look of, on a minor-league deal with a small signing bonus.
To make room on the 40 for these guys, we have to waive a few others. I'm a bit taken aback but not all that bothered when every one of them is claimed: Cedric Mullins, Ken Markham, Justin Sturge, Mike Stanton and Ted Kubiak.
Our final move for the time being is just one of balance. Almost unbelievably, we do not have a pure LHB in our squad - a fair number of switch-hitters, but no lefties. That opens the door for me to kill the proverbial pair of flying creatures, namely clearing up a bit of our backlog along with some unnecessary payroll while acquiring a player I've been eyeing for a while.
Ken Jensen is a real nice-looking 3B/SS with more gap- than HR-power. He's on the min with three further years under TC. Schmall became redundant with the Wickham add, while Tom Johnson was only ever a bubble guy and Sorrow had next to no chance of making the top level.