Blue Jays Sign Victor Zambrano
The Blue Jays have signed 31 year-old starter Victor Zambrano as an option at the back of their rotation. He received a minor-league deal with a spring training invite. Hard to believe we're only a few weeks away from pitchers and catchers reporting!
Zambrano has had Tommy John plus an additional surgery on his right elbow, so he won't make the Opening Day rotation. The Jays like the flexibility of using Zambrano as a starter or reliever. It probably won't work out, but Zambrano did have a mild amount of success in the AL East back in 2003-04.
The Toronto Sun adds that J.P. Ricciardi hopes Zambrano will be ready by mid-season and his deal includes a 2008 option.
Slow news day?
Zambrano actually looked good in quite a few of his starts as a Met. 14 quality starts in 27 games in 2005, and if you take out his 4 awful games (games in which he gave up more runs than he had innings pitched) his ERA is like 3.15 or something. He just needs to learn some consistency. I was hoping that that was what Rick Peterson was gonna try to fix, and that the Mets would bring him back on a minor league contract. Oh well.
Posted by: MetFanBen | January 31, 2007 at 08:45 AM
He walks a lot of guys and he had the surgery only 8 months ago, but it adds depth because if we need a pitcher halfway through the season, there is a shot in hell that he is better and pitching like a decent pitcher again. There is a 2008 team optino apparently
Posted by: Guitar Hero | January 31, 2007 at 08:52 AM
Isn't VZ supposed to be a Yankee killer?
Posted by: wihargo | January 31, 2007 at 09:39 AM
I guess not: career 5-6, ERA > 4.
Posted by: wihargo | January 31, 2007 at 09:43 AM
Very slow news day. But some guy complained that I'm not posting enough so I wanted to prove him wrong.
Posted by: RotoAuthority | January 31, 2007 at 09:48 AM