i’ve been hoping the front office would target at least one of piniero, duchscherer, calero for the pitching side. lackey would sure be nice, but other teams will probably be willing to pay more, eh?

after reading that article, i’m curious about carlos delgado. what is the liklihood of josh ‘kicking the tires’ on him, or him being able to help the club both off the bench with his bat and that ‘veteran presence’ in the clubhouse that piecoro is advocating, i wonder. i don’t even remember what kind of injury he went down with though. :/

He’s really good. Bedard and Smoltz worry me a bit, Sheets is probably going to be too expensive. Duchscherer is good but he’s a bit unproven as a starter. He’d be good slotted behind Scherzer. (Plus they rhyme!)

You have 300 wins. Your career makes you a no-brainer 1st ballot hall of famer. The arm is gone and you’re set for life financially. Please don’t replace our memories of you dominating with memories of you struggling and embarrassing yourself on the field.

pitching usually comes at a premium, I understand wanting the team to compete, but what kind of arm can we really afford? I think our lineup looks kinds like this 1b- jackson/allen, 2b abreu/ryal/roberts ss drew 3b reynolds, c montero, lf jackson/parra cf youbng and rf upton. Unless someone really wows them, I think that looks the most likely at this juncture. with guys like roberts, snyder, parra, allen and romero being the backups

as for the guys on the hill, we have webb, Haren, Scherzer, and a possibility of someone amongst buckner/petit/mulvey for the #5 slot. with one of those goes doing long relief duty along with vasquez, guittierrez, qualls, zavada and schlereth and perhaps rosales comes back as well.

If we’re not spending enywhere else other than renewing contracts, how much is in the bank for another arm?

Is it likely that the team releases some of these pieces or moves on, say for example, someone like snyder being dealt, if so to where or for whom?

Duchscherer or Harden on reasonable, incentive-based deals. Sheets is also someone I’d like to see, but I think he will have a higher price tag.

J.Byrnes almost never gives out incentive-based contracts.

to a short-term deal. I know he struggled the entire year to get healthy, but a full offseason might be just the elixir he needed.

I agree with the sentiments here: Davis, Duchscherer, Harden, Sheets are all interesting at the right price.

Is that absolutely none of them can stay healthy. So if you have a guy who in the first week of the season suffers an injury, then you’re stuck trying to decide what to do for the rest of the season, as well as when the season ends and you’re considering retaining him. A.k.a. the Webb Fiasco pt. II. As much as he tries, I don’t want to see Yusmeiro Petit start for us ever again. Maybe in three years if he can add four MPH to the gun. MAYBE. So that means that I’d rather keep Sheets, Duchscherer, and Harden as far away from this team as possible. Which brings me to Doug Davis. Yeah, the numbers can be scary once you look at the details, but the bottom line for me is that he’s always been able to step it up if need be (I always will remember down the stretch in I think ‘07 when he was phenomenal when he had to step into essentially a #2 role – specifically a great game against the Dodgers when he shut them out IIRC), and he always can be counted on to go out and throw every fifth day. He doesn’t completely blow out his arm because he doesn’t really put that much strain on it throwing in the low-80’s. For a team next year that’s rebuilding, we don’t need to take a flier on a guy who might be great, because then what do we get? A compensatory draft pick? That’s only if we offer arbitration, and in this market, that’s a significant risk even in the best-case scenario, because I for one do not imagine us competing if only we add one more SP. Bring back Davis for a few years (2 or 3), have Haren and Scherzer (because we really have no other choice), then put Buckner and one of Mulvey, Valdez, or Augenstein, and see what you get.