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Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Angels Sign Jeff Weaver

Rotoworld says the Angels have signed Jeff Weaver to a one-year, $8.5M contract. "He should be good for 200 innings, 13-15 wins and an ERA in the 4.20-4.40 range."

Update: now confirmed in the Times.

"We discussed some two-year proposals, but we felt a one-year situation would be good," [agent Scott] Boras said. "Jeff's still a young pitcher, and he certainly wants a multi-year contract. He had offers for more money, and a multi-year offer, be he decided to take one year and to review the situation at the end of the year."

...

Weaver, who could make about $9 million with incentives, signed for far less than what he was originally seeking, a four-year deal in the $45-million range. But once talks with the Dodgers broke off on Jan. 8, Weaver's market shrunk.

Weaver had declined an arbitration offer with the Dodgers in December. He told the team he'd sign a three-year, $27-million deal with an option, but the Dodgers never made a firm offer.

"It's very simple," Boras said, "the Dodgers said they were interested in bringing Jeff back, but in the end, they never made a proposal. I think all of the teams in baseball thought he would be with the Dodgers. Once they [pulled out] a lot of teams had already made some decisions. Jeff wanted to go to the right place. He wanted to go to a winning team."

Jon's already on top of this, observing that the Dodgers have committed similar money to Brett Tomko (albeit for more years) and guess who's the better pitcher? The mitigating factor, of course, is that the Dodgers couldn't hold on long enough to get a deal done; as Jon correctly observes, this is a problem with the current free agency setup. He also points out that the Angels must surrender a draft pick for Weaver because the Dodgers offered him salary arbitration.

Update 2: Now in via AP via ESPN, who tags the figures at $8.325M and $600,000 worth of possible bonuses.

Update 3: Also on MLB.com.


Comments:
Adds significant depth to the pitching staff ... with Oakland's recent improvements, the AL West could be a real dogfight.
 
Yes, kinda frustrating about the O... the Angels would be toast without Vlad.
 
The weakness of the Angels' offense is partly by design. The team would rather have Darin Erstad in the lineup than Dallas McPherson, even though a healthy McPherson could probably give the Halos 20+ HR and an OPS of .750-.775, as opposed to Erstad's 7 HR and OPS of .675-.700.

If Howie Kendrick continues to knock the cover off the ball, it will also be difficult to keep him down in favor of Adam Kennedy.

In other words, the Angels should be able to generate enough offense; the question is whether they want to.
 
McPherson instead of Erstad would no doubt help, but that's only one spot in the lineup. You've still got a bunch of guys that are average to below average offensively, or who aren't fully tested at the big league level.

I'd say there are offensive question marks at C, 1B, 2B, SS, CF, and LF. (LF because of Anderson's arthritis/back/knee injuries.) That's six of nine spots in the lineup.

The Angels have a decent leadoff hitter, a great hitter batting third, and will probably have a decent hitter batting fifth or sixth (the McPherson/Rivera/Quinlan DH).

Of course, if Anderson makes a comeback and if Kotchman's for real, that will make a big difference. Otherwise, PECOTA may be right about the Angels being at the bottom of the league in runs scored.
 
I pretty much need to post on this subject, and I keep forgetting to do so.

Improvements: CF, 3B, 1B (especially after Erstad blows up in June and McPherson gets to play there full time)
Declines: C

The offense could be better, though I'm not sure by how much.
 

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