Kyle Lohse Ready To Settle?

I think he is coming to NY to be the number 5 and slide up into the number 4 next year when Perez leaves and have Pelfrey move into the 5 spot in 2009 with El Duque in the pen in 2007. But who knows.

I agree. Loshe seems bound for the Mets with Omar shopping Show and Sosa.

Its funny that he would want a one year deal. Its only going to get worse for Loshe. He had trouble finding a suitor in a week free agent class. Imagine next year with Sheets, Penny, Sabathia, Lowe, O.P., Prior, and maybe Burnett.....good luck getting sniffing $9M Kyle. Loshe at $5M, finally the market is making sense!

This begs the question nrmax, do pay O.P. his 5yrs at $15/yr?

Kyle Lohse in front of Lieber AND Hill? Hardly.

Lohse is terrible, there's a reason nobody's picked him up. Chacon has more upside than Lohse and that's not saying much. Didn't he throw for some teams? Maybe they didn't like what they saw.

The Cardinals have been right to avoid Lohse. He's not enough of an improvement over anything they have to get tied into anything involving length or a decent amount of money. Even at 1/5 I am not a fan of signing Lohse when I don't think he would even crack the starting rotation by the time the 3 rehabbing guys are ready to go. Plus the Cardinals are about to receive a big influx of young talent from the minor leaguers. Jaime Garcia, Clayton Mortensen and Kyle McClellan have all impressed the coaching staff alot this spring.

You cannot put all the blame on Boras! He has other clients who found homes. Lohse - as all Twins fan know - is at best a mediocre pitcher. He really isn't worth much more than the major league minimum but somehow has convinced himself that he deserves a big contract.

Major league teams are always looking for starting pitching. That Lohse is unsigned at this late date is a pretty clear signal that Lohse is not highly regarded and that his salary demands are way out of line.

What upside? Just because a player is "young" does not mean that he has upside. While Lohse has pitched well from time to time, there are guys languishing in Triple AAA that have shown flashes as well but with no expectation that they will get multi-year, big dollar contracts.

A decent #5? Not a chance. Decent only if you are willing to settle for a warm body. Lohse in the rotation means that a team will always be looking to find a replacement. Especially if you are paying him $5million a year!

Say you are looking for a vintage car, oh I don't know, how about a '67 Mustang Shelby, do you negotiate with the salesman or walk out the door and hope that you run across another one of these rare classics?! The answer is you sit down at the table and try to work it out as best you can if this is the car you really want. As long as you aren't having to overpay by too much, you suck it up and realize that what you are getting back makes too much sense financially as an investment for what you really have to pay out.

So guys like Alex Rodriguez, Adrian Beltre, and soon Mark Teixeira, have all made nice contracts off of Boras' work, but it's because of the value of these players that teams put up with the sleezy car salesman of a player agent that Scott Boras is and hope that the next marquee player will have different representation.

Kyle Lohse is a guy that has NOT ONE out pitch! He throws average for a right-handed pitcher, as lefties can get away with 88-90mph due to the limited supply of southpaws who can pitch, but a righty that throws 91-93 is average. He is known for throwing a relatively movement free pitch and I remember one guy equated hitting off him to taking batting practice! His breaking pitches are average at best and his pitching savvy is the only reason he's even playing baseball today.

The fact is that Lohse is affected by Scott Boras being his agent, yes it's his fault that he's not a better pitcher that's capable of commanding more attention, but many of his suitors won't negotiate with Boras for him. To go back to the car comparison, it's like having great credit, lots of money down and then dealing with a sleezy car salesman so that you can get a 10 year old Honda. Why in the hell would you go through all of that?! You wouldn't. Most of the deals during the winter meetings happen on the golf course or in the bar supposedly while friends who are on opposite sides of the negotiations table are talking casually. It's like selling your old car to your friend so that he can use it as a commuter car. He wouldn't go to a dealership to get one, but he'd buy the car from his friend. If Lohse had an agent that was liked, he would've had his contract!

It didn't help that Lohse went in asking for 5 years and 60 million dollars like a jackass! Then he backed off to 3 years and 36 million, then it was down to 3 years and 10 million per season and now he's looking for 1 year and 5 million, whose more desperate, Lohse or Boras?! You know if Lohse doesn't get at least a two year deal with what he was looking for at the beginning of the offseason, you can bet that Boras will have a steady migration of players leaving the fold of his company! Also, Corey Patterson should've found work but didn't because of Boras and most of the players on the board still are Scott's players. It's not colusion but it's close enough to it to make me happy! You get rid of Boras and it's like having cancer removed from your testicules. You'll never be the same, but at least it's gone!

Kyle Lohse has posted a 4.62 ERA ever since his arrival to the National League. And has done so injury free. A good offense can make this guy into the double digits in W's no problem. I'll take that out of my #5 spot, and so would 75% of the league.

In reply to your post about the 4.62 ERA being good enough out of your #5 pitcher:

Only 8 of the 16 teams in the NL would've scored more runs per game than what Lohse would surrendered on average across 9 innings. That means his ERA wouldn't have been acceptable for a #5 for half of the NL.

If you take his 5.10 ERA since the beginning of 2006 across both leagues and compare it similarly to ALL teams instead of just the NL, you'll actually see the number drop to 5 teams that could've scored enough runs to make him a serviceable 5th man in their rotation. That means 1/2 of the national league could use him or 1/6 of all of baseball if he has even a spell close to what he did in 2006. Lohse as an option for the 5th spot in the rotation... This myth is clearly busted!

Puzzled as to why people think the Cardinals should sign a guy that historically has an ERA of 4.5-5.00? Why pay $5M to a guy to provide what Brad Thompson, Wellemeyer or a rookie can do for 1/10 the price? Even Reyes projects to be better.

The fact is, Lohse SHOULD blame Boras. Why? Because a good agent gives his client REALISTIC contract expectations and clearly Lohse has been given poor advice. Clearly, Boras and Lohse are hoping that some team has crippling injuries during spring training and cough up a contract out of desperation. That's far from a guarantee and I'd love nothing more for Lohse to be on the outside looking in come Opening Day.

The only thing that Lohse ever did wrong was hire Boras. It's not because he's a "bad clubhouse guy." Most guys seem to really like playing with him, but that's not what happened here, this is about his agent, plain and simple!

There is one guy under 30 years old who is still available as a position player and that's Corey Patterson, his agent is Boras.

There is one guy under 30 who is still available as a pitcher and that's Kyle Lohse, his agent is Boras.

These two are blackballed until they get a new agent. You won't see anybody sign either one of these guys before the season starts UNLESS they get a new agent!

Calm down Guru. Lohse is a league average starter and provides a lot of innings. He's worth whatever he gets at this point.