Just In Case You Missed It

The past week has been marked by alot of players avoiding arbitration and resigning with their current teams. The largest contract going to Ryan Howard. The Phils bought out his remaining arbitration years for a cool 54 mil for 3 years. But during the past week three players changed uniforms. While none of these signings set the baseball world a blaze they are all interesting for one reason or another

Ty Wigginton-Orioles Is there one player who always seems to have great games when you are at the park? Anytime Daniel was at the Trop Wigginton always did well. If he stayed in Tampa and gave him season tickets Wigginton would be making 10 mil a year. But anyway Wigginton signing with Baltimore is a bit odd. There really is no regular place for him to play. Defensively he plays about the same positions as Aubrey Huff who was fantastic last year. Ideally you platoon Wigginton at third base but both he and Melvin Mora are righties. Other options are have him getting ABs against lefties and benching Luke Scott in left. Or have him DH. In the end Wigginton probably gets about 400 ABs playing various positions. To me in a perfect world he would be much better suited to be a part time player on a better team.

Tom Gordan-Diamondbacks-Gordan joins Chad Quallis, Jon Rauch and Tony Pena at the back end of the Arizona pen. If Gordan is healthy he adds another arm, if not there is not much lost. The only problem I see is all four of the above pitchers are all right handed. It should be very interesting to see how Bob Melvin manges the end of games. This situation lends itself to playing the hot hand. The NL West should be very close and any little improvements may lead to winning the division. All I know is I'll probably be up way too late watching them listening to my favorite broadcaster Mark Grace.

Andruw Jones-Rangers-This move surprised me. While Jones is costing Texas next to nothing it seemed Texas was looking to have youth in their outfield. Assuming Jones is somewhere between the guy who hit 51HRs and the guy who hit 158 he would be their CF. If thats the case Josh Hamilton then probably gets moved to right. And Nelson Cruz who they seemed to like the RF either goes to left and competes with David Murphy or goes to DH. In addition the Rangers also have Marlon Byrd in the outfield. And the DH position will probably be manned by Hank Blalock and Frank Catalanotto. Anyway you look at it they have no shortage of bats. Jone's main value may come in if he can give them gold glove quality play in center. Thus cutting down the amount of runs a very questionable Texas staff gives up. As an FYI while I can handle most D-Backs questions any Rangers questions I'll defer to Mike who knows alot more about them than I do.