We non-tender both P Rick Forney ($700k est) and P Charles Smith ($1.4m), and offer
IF John Whitehouse $500k, which he later accepts. I think we can get replacements for the two pitchers at much cheaper rates.
OF Earl Hill is an FA and we canvass him about the idea of hanging around in a mentoring role at AAA but he feels he still has some time left in the game at the major level and turns us down.
OF Eugene Clough executes his contract option so we have him for another year, but at just $450k I don't mind that - even if he'll almost certainly spend that year at Buffalo.
Two huge surprises kick off FA season, as we sign both
P Ken Chase and
P Craig Kimbrel on minor-league deals with small bonuses. No idea why they aren't chasing beaucoup coin, but that's OK with me.
Chase looks pretty much ready to go now, while Kimbrel could take a while but will hopefully be worth the wait.
The only middle IF that really grabs me among the FAs is
Liover Peguero, and we offer him a 2/$8.9m deal which is still unsigned as we hit Draft Day.
He comes back to us playing silly buggers, so I change tack and get a bit more aggressive elsewhere, offering
Chester Trail a 2/$12.4m deal after he hits us up for 2/$13.5m.
Meanwhile, I sit down with
P Waite Hoyt and we offer him what I think is a cheeky 3/$10.5m deal.
We do the annual Rule 5 shuffle, trying to dangle a few unwanted guys on the WW and then in the draft itself. We get rid of Eugene Clough (who then ends up going to Boston via the Rule 5) and Verton Minor on waivers, then Daniel Wooldridge, Richard Bauerle, Mark Clear and Julian Morgan in the R5 - a total of $4m in payroll freed up.
We find out via the news wire that Trail has signed with the Nats for a million less than we were offering, sending us back to the drawing-board again. That leads us to veteran Warren Butts, to whom we offer a 1/$2.7m deal. After an interminable wait, he counters with double that. (He eventually splits the diff when he signs with the 'Stros.)
Peguero also settles for lower than what we had offered - and just as I'm starting to take all of this nonsense quite personally, Hoyt comes back with the signed contract.
Finally the solution comes, almost by accident. In shopping Jarrod Parker, now superfluous to our needs, the Nats offer up a decent high-contact prospect who just happens to play SS. I check what it would take to get Trail thrown into the deal. The answer, when it comes, is more than amenable, and so this deal is consummated.
Dornbusch is not much of a gloveman but profiles as a nice DH type down the track. Trail is just plain solid around the IF and hits better than is rating say he should, with some thunder in his bat as well.
Let's hope it really is true that good things come to those who wait.