What a difference a year makes, hey, as we have an incredibly uneventful and low-key offseason. Some changes of heart both by the players and ourselves means we ended up extending Woodie Fryman (1/350), Andy Hassler (3/480) and Gene Garber (3/420) and our only contribution to the transactions list over the break was another recycled LHRP as we sign Lou Marone on a 1+1/400 deal that allows us to take a slower approach with Rod Scurry.
Look, if I’m being totally frank I think we are getting a bit long in the tooth and a long-overdue hard rebuild is probably on the cards before too long. We’ll try and do it gradually first, but if that fails then we may need to take some pain in the interim while we effectuate the change.
That said, we still have plenty of quality among the bunch and if we can get our pitchers to do as expected and don’t suffer key injuries then we might be as competitive as BNN is saying we will. But that’s a lot of “ifs” and we’re more looking for a winning campaign as being the benchmark.
UL Washington gets the starting 2B job, while Milt May – who we’d picked up on a minors deal last season – comes in at the expense of Gary Alexander as the backup catcher. Another old face (although Milt has never actually played for us at the MLB level) in Rennie Stennett, acquired via the same means, is also back in the fold albeit in a backup role. Pops and Kong will work a platoon at 1B and I think we'll try extend Dave as Pops is nearly done and very proppy, as we have already seen in ST.
Rick Rhoden gets one more chance as an SP, with Rick Langford to operate in LR out of the bullpen to begin with and come in as our spot starter as needed. Garber gets the nod over Victor Cruz but I get the feeling our pen will be a bit of a revolving door this year.