While there is a lot about Figgins that I like (leadoff), here are my doubts:
Signing a player off of a career year…will he be that good again? Paying the price of a players best year can bite later (see Eric Byrnes).
While he’s versatile, he’s not filling our biggest holes. Unless he plays third and Reynolds moves to first (not a bad option, but not a solution, either).
Second? That seems to be his weakest position.

As for Marquis, we’d be paying for all these wins he had last year.

He’s a good pitcher, but he’s coming off a season he probably can’t replicate, and probably wants to get paid.

LaRoche might be a good pick up as a right handed first baseman, as long as he signs on the cheap. $10M for 2 years would be a good deal.

for the promo.
I agree that a SP (preferably a lefty) should be our first priority; I’m just not sure that anybody available excites me. There are several gambles, but no real sure bets.
As far as first base, I really want to see if CoJack can return to form. If (always such a big word) he can, that solves one right-handed bat problem.
And there’s always the potential for trades…

Jared Washburn? I know he got spanked last year after being traded, and although he’s not as good as he showed in Seattle, he’s not as bad as he showed in Detroit. Somewhere comfortably between those production levels in the AL has to be good enough for a solid 4th starter in the NL, and nobody’s going to give him more than a year, and nobody’s going to overpay for him. Heck, we can even use that to our advantage and try to give him two years if we want to make sure we get him. He’d be able to be servicable in 2011 as a #5 and hopefully by then our #5 this year, Billy Buckner, might have improved enough to step in as a #4.

I don’t get the panic for a 1B solution. We just traded for Allen, we want him presumably to someday be an everyday guy, so even if Co-Jack can’t platoon at first every day there’s a LHP (presumably because we also want to platoon him with Gerardo Parra in LF), why not give Allen the chance to improve? The only way the kid’s going to get better is with ABs.

And since Washburn isn’t going to cost us $12M, that gives us some funds to go out and nab ourselves a final, solidifying bullpen arm, probably not a Rafael Betancourt, but maybe a Brandon Lyon or a Ryota Igarashi from Japan.

I can’t state this capitalized enough.

Because i would hat to see him eat OPP. pitchers alive somewhere else because we decided to give up on him.

Makes no sense right now, as you would be selling at the absolute lowest. You couldn’t get anything of value for him right now, and you’d be setting yourself up for another Quentin scenario.

Yes, I know CY will never be the hitter Q is, but good defensive center fielders who can hit a little bit are valuable.

sounded like a great idea to me until I saw just how highly he ranks amongst free agent starters. Namely, right after Lackey. My reasoning (contrary to the Yahoo article linked above) is that he’s ahead of Wolf as Wolf is older, more likely to break down, and had a career year into his mid-to-late 30’s he’s not likely to repeat, ahead of Harden because of injuries, ahead of Bedard because of injuries, ahead of Pettite because Pettite’s “free agency” is only a formality, and ahead of Chapman because Chapman probably won’t be in a rotation next season. He just put up a dazzling season with a legit 3.49 ERA. It’s not a flier on Pineiro, it’s a multi-year deal for a lot of money.

Capuano’s career fell apart. Given that we’re already taking a flier on Webb, why risk another one with Capuano?

What happens to Cole Gillespie? Going to banish him to AAA again to have the declining bat of Mike Cameron as a fifth OF for mentor purposes? Hire Tony Clark as a consultant or coach, you get the mentor without using the roster spot.

Hudson’s offensive numbers were largely due to his insane output in April and May- he hit .227 in September. And his Golden Glove really just illustrates how stupid the Golden Glove awards are.

You know we can’t compete financially with the Mets, Dodgers and Cubs. Going into bidding wars with the likes of them will get us nowhere.

Going the safe route for my lead off post, I’m going to build off of Mr McLennan.

LOL. I’m saying nothing on that. ;-)

The problem with Blalock is, he’s another left-hander (like Allen and Whitesell), and his career line against LHP is not very good: .229/.279/.378, for a .667 OPS. I’d rather see us get someone who can handle lefties better, and can thus be platooned with our youngsters, to give them a chance to develop properly. I think CoJack should stick to the outfield: his defense at 1B was pretty bad, and that was when he was there every day – bouncing around isn’t going to help.

Wolf wouldn’t be a bad choice. but I’ve a feeling the competition will be too much. I think he over-performed last year (an ERA+ of 122, compared to a career number of 103), and he’ll turn 34 next August. I suspect we aren’t getting a late-bloomer, and as paqs noted, is likely in line for a regression. If we can get him for $6-7m, I’d be all over that, but tend to feel the bidding will be significantly higher.

Washburn is worth taking a chance on, if the price is right (and it should be). Giving the younger players a shot makes good sense, if your willing to accept that 2010 will be a ‘building’ year instead of a ‘championship’ run. If (there’s that word, again) Jackson, Webb, and possibly Young return to form, it wouldn’t be a stretch to compete in the west.
I also agree with you about Snyder. A second ML quality catcher is a good thing to have, so unless it’s a really good trade offer, we’re better off keeping him. Much as I like Montero, I have some concerns about how he’ll hold up over a full season.
BTW: the yahoo list that I linked to doesn’t reflect my opinion so much as it was a convenient list; a starting point for discussion. I’m sure there are 10 brazillion different opinions on the comparative values of different players.

The problem with Washburn is that he is an extreme fly-ball pitcher (43% last year), so he’s best suited to spacious parks with a great defensive OF like Seattle. Washburn has stated that he’s looking to go back to Seattle, or to the Twins or Brewers, so he can stay close to his Wisconsin home.

This entire scenario with starting pitchers is going to boil down to this – are we willing to take on an injury risk to add more upside per dollar, or do we feel that we have enough injury risk with Webb and take a secure, injury-free option, despite having to maybe pay a little extra for the performance. If the former, our options are Sheets, Penny, Bedard, & Pedro. With any of these guys except Pedro, we get the upside of a #2 starter performance, and Pedro has #3 upside, but all of them have the downside of nothing and having to plug in a Mulvey or Augenstein into the rotation to fill in in the case of a blowout. If the latter, our options are Wolf (although I’m tempted to throw him in an in-between category because blowout is expected from Wolf at some point), Pineiro (if we’re willing to really splurge), Washburn, and Garland. We’ll know what we get from them, but it might cost a little more.

Is that yeah, he’s a decent fit, but he’s essentially the same player as Cole Gillespie could be right? A fourth/fifth OF? So why not take the risk that Gillespie is that guy and save the money? It’s risky, but not too risky because it is, after all, a backup spot.

Would move to second before Drew. But Tatis is an interesting name, given how decently he produced last year in spacious Citi Field.

Tatis certainly is an interesting name I haven’t heard mentioned before. Fits the “veteran bat” the FO says they want. Numbers look pretty good, probably average defense at 1st. Added versatility is great as well. And I can’t imagine he would cost much. I like it!

Capuano’s off the list now. Duscherer or Bedard would be two pretty excellent #4s for sure, but I think we won’t be willing to pay as much as other teams will.

Figgins would be amazing, but just doesn’t fit with the team’s needs or budget right now, I think.

With Duch in the ’pen than the rotation.

I presume, by your reference to Parra as the fourth outfielder , that Eric Byrnes is a write-off in your mind? If we can get Garland for around $7m, that would be fine – and it’d be very amusing to do that to the Dodgers, especially if Abreu turns out to be the second-baseman of the future.

What I like about Johnson is, while he’s a lefty, he doesn’t have the typical LHB 1B splits – in his career, he actually has a BETTER line vs. LHP, hitting them at a .292 clip. We could still allow Allen to get his licks in as appropriate. Like the LaRussa style line-up, with the pitcher in the eighth spot, but I’d be more inclined to go Johnson-Upton-Reynolds in the middle. I am wondering if Jackson’s speed surge in the DWL was because he was told he’ll be hitting leadoff for us? We can but hope…

I agree. Johnson certainly is a better option than Branyan. I wonder if we could pick off a right handed 1B from another team in a trade. Jorge Cantu? Paul Konerko (huge $12M 2010 salary would have to be swallowed by CWS)?

But after a title run with Philly that came up just short, he’ll want to go to a known contender, which we aren’t.

There’s really only one choice and it’s Nick Johnson.

Holliday and Bay are too expensive, and so is Branyan, coming off that season.

Matsui, Vlad, Thome and Dye can’t play the field, and Damon is borderline.

CHONE projects Johnson as a +18 hitter, BtB has him at -1 UZR. The positional adjustment is -12.5 and the replacement level for 600 PA is +20. Put it all together and you get something close to 2.5 WAR. Of course, you can never expect him to get to 600 PA, but if you prorate to 400 PA, he’d be worth about 1.8 WAR or close to $8M.

I have no idea how much money he wants, but since he only hit 8 HR last year (most of his value is in OBP) it can’t be much more than his $5.5M salary from last year. If we can get him on a two year deal similar to the one we gave Garland, I’d be very happy. Around $6M in the first year, and $8-9M in the second year, with an option. The kicker would be, if he didn’t get 400 PA, we pay nothing in the second year, and if he got 600 PA, the option would automatically kick in.

Let me play devil’s advocate here for a bit:

1. MLB average OPS last year at 1B was .846. That makes even the most optimistic projection for Hinske (.777) rather less impressive and certainly not “average results”.
2. While James’s projections are likely high, comparing apples to apples, the Hinske numbers is 50 points below the James projection for Allen.
3. He’s another LHB who can’t hit lefties – career line is .221/.296/.370 for a .666 OPS. We are already well-stocked with those, both at 1B or in the outfield.

There’d be worse signings out there, certainly, but I’d see Hinske more as a fallback choice than a first option.

I wouldn’t want to be the team signing that guy to a multi year, big money deal.

We’re going to be stuck with the guy who was challenging for the home run title for much of the season and has seen some pretty noticeable improvements to his defense. The guy who stepped up to call out the team when they really needed it, and was one of the few bright spots of the season. And he’s going to cost us less than half a million dollars for it, too.

That’s totally gonna suck.

I was interested in Penny, but that seems like too much of a base salary.

Recent signings feel to me as either way too much or way too little. It’s been a difficult off-season to predict thus far.

Penny getting 7.5M is completely bizarre to me. What in the world? I know Duncan can work magic, but I don’t see any scenario the Cardinals feel good about that acquisition… especially when my suspicion is that things settle down and some of the same caliber guys go for a few million less.

3 years $15M in Houston. Do they make the stupidest FA signings EVERY year or is it just me?

He’s also an injury risk who didn’t throw well the last time he was healthy… I’d rather have the Japanese guy, or Chan Ho Park, either of whom might be available for similar money.