Odds and Ends: Lohse, Reyes, Greinke, Howard

The Marlins seem to prefer the trade market, if they are to add a catcher.

Who are they looking at? One of the Texas catchers? The Angels' Mike Napoli? AJ Pierzynski of the White Sox? Brian Schneider of the Mets?

Napoli to the Marlins would make me very, very happy.

Why do people keep thinking that Mike Napoli is even remotely avaiable? There have been no indications that he is.

Well scribbletone,

I just randomly threw out names off the top of my head. I don't follow the Angels that much, so I couldn't tell you if he's available or not.

that lohse deal is gonna be bad just like the eaton deal for the phils

lohse deal is bad. but at least he is a guy who is non-injury guy. the deal will be bad if he drops his production from last year which should be expected. Duncan has a real challenge in trying to get 2008 numbers from lohse over the course of this contract. If Carp is healthy enough to bump lohse down in the rotation would help. he pitched from the 1 or 2 way too much last year...

"Cardinals have a high payroll, but they have a lot of bad deals. To have a 100M payroll and only one superstar. T. Glaus is already insjured and I think he is making like 11M."

Glaus is only hurt for like the first month of the season, and he was actually a pretty valuable piece in 2008.

The Cardinals do have a pretty high payroll, with the budget finally crossing the $100M threshold for the first time this year.

I do agree that the Cardinals have some fairly poor investments though, but the key is that none of them are godawful.

Obviously Pujols at $16M per is a big steal, and they have him at that rate through 2011.

And then there is Carpenter, who still has 3/43.5 left on his deal, as well as a $15M option with a $1M buyout. That deal is pretty brutal, but only because of Carp's injury. If he can bounce back, they'll be alright.

Glaus is fine at his salary for one season.

But then they have Piniero and Lohse locked in at between $7-7.5M each for 2009, and Greene making $6.5M.

The key though is that Piniero, Greene and Glaus all come off the books after 2009, Carpenter should actually provide some value soon, and Lohse will be worth it as long as he can come close to repeating his 2008 performance.

The Cardinals are in a perfectly fine financial situation, right up until 2011 when Pujols hits FA.

hombrej, you see at least the organization is not cheap. I'll take the 200m Payroll and all the all-stars against the 100M and 1 star.

Cardinals player had good #s last year and still ended up in 4th place in the central.

Pavano? yeah I'll give you that, not Brown, Yanks didn't sign him. But what about that Mulder trade uh?

hindsight is 20/20 on mulder trade. but you are right...it ended up bad

You really can't bash the Cards so much for the Mulder trade. The Mulder extension, yes, that was all bad, but not the trade.

Mulder was an ace. You have to give up top assets to get ace level pitchers. To get an ace for one MLB-ready top young pitching prospect(Haren), one rookie ball prospect who was a major positional question mark at the time(Barton), and one crappy reliever (Calero) was a sound deal at the time. Mulder had missed a good portion of 2003, but he was strong in 2004. You just don't know with prospects. You just don't.

Funny, Oakland's rotation with Zito, Hudson, and Mulder was pretty dominant but none of them really panned out once they left Oakland. Must be something in the water.

"Funny, Oakland's rotation with Zito, Hudson, and Mulder was pretty dominant but none of them really panned out once they left Oakland."

Hudson has been solid in Atlanta. He had an off year, and his 2008 was abbreviated and he's out for 2009, but when he pitched, he was still solid.

I would say their best options would be Brain Schneider, one of the Texas catchers, or sign Ivan Rodriguez.

By that I meant they didn't turned out to be the Ace-quality pitchers that they were with the As. All of them saw drops in performance. Hudson, obviously, had the smallest drop but he still wasnt the guy the Braves thought they'd be getting.

""Funny, Oakland's rotation with Zito, Hudson, and Mulder was pretty dominant but none of them really panned out once they left Oakland.""

Mulder got hurt. He was his same Oakland self in 2005, his first year with the Cardinals. Injury messes with the performance of all pitchers, not just the Oakland ones. Shoulder injuries aren't fun.

Zito's performance had begun dropping LONG before he hit free agency. He was among the leaders in walks in the AL perenially.

His FIP was also approaching 5 in 2006, before he hit FA. He had very high WHIPs in 2004-2006 and pedestrian K/BB rates in 2005-2006. People thinking of Zito as that dominant ace were the ones who were mistaken. He was NOT an ace in 2005-2006. Absolutely not. The park and good infield defense were doing him many, many favors.

But yeah, Oakland does help pitchers though.