Friday, January 07, 2005

What's to say?

Being on vacation is a nice thing, but it does mean I have little to say about the Adrian Beltre signings and every other newsworthy baseball event that hasn't already been said. I'm happy about it, and it does make the Sexson signing a little less worrisome. There was speculation that we had to overpay for Sexson to overcome a bad rep as a team to sign with, and now we've got confirmation, according to Tom's summary of a KJR interview with Bill Bavasi. Sexson is still a huge injury risk, in my view, but risk means uncertainty, which means he could turn out some great seasons, too.

I know Dave's happy about the Pokey Reese signing, since he's been beating that drum for awhile, and I don't disagree, but for me to be really confident about having a chance this year, the M's still need to trade Randy Winn for a pitcher, or have the Magic Baseball Fairy turn in him into one. (Bavasi, in his KJR interview, says he realizes this, but he also says that no trades are on the horizon).

A year or two ago, we thought pitching wasn't going to be a problem with this team in the coming years, what with talented pitching prospects coming out our ears. Raphael Soriano was just the head of the class. But now Soriano's out injured (What? A young M's pitching prospect injured?), most of our young arms showed they have a lot of seasoning before they'll be effective at the major-league level, and we traded our best pitcher last year. It was a good trade, but we're hurting in the pitching department.

So we wait to see if anything pans out. Otherwise, we're looking at a rotation full of no. 3 or no. 4 starters. But I'm feeling good about the off-season. With a lot of money and a lot of room for improvement, the front office has made some great progress.

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