HOT STOVE, COOL SAND

Lilly, 30, has a career 59-58 record in eight major-league seasons with Montreal, the Yankees, Oakland and Toronto. He went 15-13 with a 4.31 ERA for the Blue Jays last season.

I'm starting to think that JP was a prophet after all.

Gleeman's NBC.com Winter Meetings blog suggests that Schmidt screwed himself out of buxxx by settling for "Meche / Lilly" money w/ that Dodgers contract. Let's remember the dude was signed for $47M over 3 years. WTF kind of world is it where GIL MECHE gets over $15M?

I like paying Loaiza 7M/yr the best. No one on the A's boards think that was dumb deal now.

Lilly strikes $40M deal with Cubs | Hendry has angioplasty

any correlation?

Jays lose Meche to Royals

wtf are the Royals even doing spending money?

They still get money ya know? What are they supposed to do with it?

The Twins have spoken with the agents for righthander Sidney Ponson, a career 80-96 pitcher who was 4-5 with a 6.25 ERA last season in stints with the Yankees and Cardinals, both of whom released him. He was 17-12, 3.75 in 2003 with Baltimore and San Francisco. The Twins likely would sign him to a minor league deal with an invitation to spring training.

AAAAGH AAAGH AGH

We need all that $$$ for quality pitching, which apparently involves helping Dennys Reyes feel better about his weight by signing someone even fatter.

Then again I didn't understand why they didn't try for Thomas last year either.

Frank Thomas + turf = problems.

Tell JP that *cough*.

Any GM that signed a player to a bad contract prior to this offseason looks like a genius.

1) Invest in their farm system.
2) Keep away from the mid-level starting pitcher free agent market.
3) Rent the services of multiple bodyguards for Alex Gordon.
4) Bring Rush Limbaugh back into the fold as the Grand Royal With Cheese.
5) Have Tony Muser killed, then brought back to life as a zombie.
6) Have Undead Tony Muser kill Allard Baird.
7) Turn Mike Sweeney into sharkbait.
8) Post Angel Berroa's ROY trophy on eBay.
9) Buy Bob Hamelin & Ken Harvey a Monte Cristo each.

at least he's still better than GORD Ash

Wells for Penny, Kemp and let's say Billingsley? I mean, you'd pretty much have to take that deal if you're JP.

?!

wanna compare ash's draft history to jp's?

ILX COME BACK WE MISS YOU (and I have rocks in my ass).

While with the Cubs, Alfonseca was thrown out of a game on September 2, 2003, for hitting an umpire with his stomach.

WAHT.

In other news, surprising no one, Bonds re-signs with Giants.

jp's highlights so far: russ adams, david bush, aaron hill and adam lind.

admittedly it's not exactly fair to compare 95-01 guys to those from 02-05, but that's still a pretty damning dropoff.

jp's highlights so far: russ adams, david bush, aaron hill and adam lind.

OK, this is silly. Young didn't come up in the J's org, and the last nine names are unproven/fouth OF/burnouts (koch), with the possible exception of Blake. The Jays were a shittier team when Ash ran the club, and therefore they could draft earlier and get more can't-miss prospects. It didn't take a genius to pick Vernon Wells fifth overall. Meanwhile, we won't know how JP's picks (which included a lot of impressive Sept 2006 callups) turn out for a few years yet.

Gord Ash banked on rejects from last-place Pittsburgh (Carlos Garcia, Orlando Merced, yeah WHO DEY) to push the team over the edge from mediocrity, and signed 190-year old Ruben Sierra because he didn't think Shawn Green was ready for the big leagues (even though it was his third full season with the club). His best trade was Plesac-Tony Batista, which looked like an absolute steal at the time but then again, only a couple of years later, Batista was gone and Plesac was resigned.

The biggest transaction that occured during Ash's tenure was the free-agent signing of Clemens, and he had nothing to do with it (club president Paul Beeston did all the work).

Well, they replaced Meche for a lot less than $11 million, and I'm not sure he's any worse!

middle-aged request: mention all teams involved, cuz right now I have no idea who Carlos Quentin is.

dude was (v. briefly) the white sox's next superstar iirc

dude with good power and decent patience who was #5 in the mvp voting in '08, good year in '11, two mediocre years in between. should become a nice, forgettable 40 doubles per year guy in petco.

He probably would have finished higher in '08 MVP voting if he hadn't missed around 30 games near the end of the season (temper-related wrist fracture).