6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog: Roster Notes

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Saturday, February 11, 2006

Roster Notes

Arizona Diamondbacks centerfield prospect Chris Young broke his hand during agility drills, and will miss spring training. Young was scheduled to be the team's starting centerfielder. Jeff DaVanon will probably start in centerfield instead.
In that same story, the Reds acquired LHP Mike Gosling off waivers, and the Snakes turned right around and got Felix Heredia on a minor league contract.
Weaver Watch, Day 7: There continues to be no report of a Jeff Weaver signing, but the Register reports the team has offered him a 1-year, $9M deal.
Five more Angels minor leaguers were signed to one-year deals: pitchers Joe Saunders, Jose Arredondo, Scott Dunn and Steven Shell, and OF Nick Gorneault.
Alfonso Soriano "lost" his arbitration case, getting a paltry $10M from the Nationals. And he still doesn't want to play in the outfield.
The Nationals have offered Sammy Sosa a $500,000, one-year, non-guaranteed contract. Sammy will probably pout and accept it.
As suggested earlier by the Denver Post, the Rockies have signed garbage-time pitcher Josh Fogg. This should be interesting... he's had ERAs over 5.00 two of the last three years in more-or-less balanced parks.
This isn't really a transaction, but an article about a future decision the Cards will have to make: former Angel Jim Edmonds will make $12 million in 2006, and then the Cards will have to decide whether they want to exercise his 2007 option. It's far from a done deal, but a lack of centerfielders -- heck, real prospects, generally -- at the minor league level make this a less-than-obvious decision.
This conundrum, along with the sudden decline of the Cards' once-formidable offensive outfield, unhelped by lukewarm signings such as Juan Encarnation and Junior Spivey, sparked Will Leitch to write a recent Baseball Prospectus piece noting how small the Cards' St. Louis market is in relation to every other market in baseball, ranking in the bottom five for major league metropolitan areas. This is a franchise on the precipice:
It’s not just one thing. It’s a combination of all of it, the unwanted new stadium, the lack of respect for radio tradition, the sudden (and promise-breaking) penny-pinching. Suddenly, this doesn’t resemble the fuzzy love of Cardinal Nation; it feels like just another team. Like a business. It is a business, of course, but when you’re messing with Cardinals tradition, you’re in serious danger of killing the golden goose. If the fans turn against the franchise, the Cardinals really are just another team. And that’s disaster.
Good news for Cubs fans.