[mikev]

N'Awlins News Offseason Special Report

After several rounds of negotiations with several teams, corner infielder Jack Dark was sent to Long Beach today, the team announced a short while ago.

Coming back to the Bayou in exchange for Dark? 25 year old outfielder Arthur Jagger, as well as the Surfers 3rd round pick in next year's First Year Player Draft and $1 million dollars in cash. New Orleans also agreed to send their 4th rounder in '96 to Long Beach.

Jagger, a career .314 hitter with Long Beach, will assume the starting Right Field role with the Crawdads. He replaces departed free agent Guam Fantomhorsfli, who [s]suckered in[/s] agreed to a 5.5M per year deal with the Buffalo franchise.

When asked about the deal, Crawdad GM Mike Voelker had this to say: "I'm pleased with it. I know that I'm going to catch some flak from the rest of the league, saying I didn't get enough in return for Jack. The bottom line, though, is that Willie (Williams) is ready to start for us, Pepper (Brooks, 3B) had a hell of a season for us last year, and Mike D. is going to be ready to come back soon. There just wasn't room for him to play, especially when we can get basically the same production without him for nearly 4 million less dollars. We have to think about dollars and cents this year, that's for sure. Also, moving up a round in the draft is going to be very helpful, as that's one of the more likely ways we are going to get decent talent. We're projecting a very deep draft again next year."

"Plus, you can never discount that fact that players we aquire from Josh always bump right after leaving Long Beach. I'm sure that Jagger will rival Gary Barr in a few years, production-wise."