[cknox0723]

However, I don't have quite as much here. Our lineup is awful - we finished in the bottom three in the majors in almost every hitting category sauf home runs. We're the Billy Beane model of offense right now, without all the things that the man who wrote Moneyball (wink wink) actually considers important!

Anyway, we've got a few solid starting pitchers - but we always could use some more. Unfortunately, 'solid' seems to be a rather fleeting, unreachable goal to shoot for. No pitcher with any breadth of talent (read: Hudson, Ohka, Schmidt, Suppan, Byrd, and Burnett) wants to even consider us, and I'm not spending millions on Tony Armas, Odalis Perez, or Freddy Garcia. So I toss a small contract offer to Jason Johnson - three years and $450,000 per year. The Diabetic One, age 32, never lived up to that big (?) free agent contract that Detroit gave him this offseason (real offseason, that is). He was actually decent the first year, but a league-average or so (after Comerica is factored out) ERA of 4.19 was obscured by a miserable 5-12 ledger. He was waived early in this past season, picked up by the Rockies, and then released. Nice. But I'll take my bargains where I can get 'em - if I can get 'em.

I also toss a couple minor league contract offers out there to two pitchers that are polar opposites, for the most part. 34 year old Garrett Stephenson had a decent little career derailed by injuries, and spent almost all of last year in the minors. I wouldn't be too displeased with him as my fifth starter, though. 24 year old Kyle Sleeth, a Wake Forest alumnus and former top-5 draft pick by -- wait for it -- the Tigers, was cut at the end of last year. He's not an earth-shaking prospect by any means, but has 25 wins over the past two years at AA Erie and AAA Toledo. The ERA's aren't as shiny, but wins are the only thing that matters, right? Right.

And this brings us to perhaps our biggest weakness (especially with Mr. Heredia's departure) - the bullpen. I immediately spot Octavio Dotel on the market, and can't right-click his name fast enough. But I notice he was diagnosed with bone chips in his shoulder last July. Oh. So you're saying he was pitching with half an arm? An injury that, of course, could be one of those recurring injuries. But I still can't resist (Bargains, right? Got to get be efficient with the almighty dollar any way possible, and who's going to want a guy with a bum wing?) offering him a three year deal worth a million bucks a year. Again, he's a longshot at best to agree to that, but it can't hurt to try.

We're about out of cash, so I give fungible middle reliever Brandon Villafuerte a minor league contract offer. He's bounced between four or five teams in the past few years, and was out of the league for almost all of last season, but posted a 4.19 ERA in 2004 with decent enough peripherals. Looks like a nice little sleeper to me.

And that is that, not out of choice, but necessity. As you can sort of tell, I'm not one to target only a few guys - my mantra is quantity over quality. I'm not even sure how much quantity we can get in this case, but if we can get a few of the key players (namely Berkman, Dotel, and, of all people, Jason Johnson), I think we could make a run for .500 this year. Of course, Jackson, Cicotte, and Weaver could probably help us with that, too. However, I don't think Mouthpiece Bud would approve.

Craig