Jon Garland and trying to bring back Andy from the Yankees. How hard of a sell could it be? Deer Park….New York City…Deer Park…New York City…

You’d probably spend more short term than you would on the first year of Sheet’s contract, but you’d get two pitchers who I think could perform better than one Sheet’s. Give Andy and 1yr/1yr option and Garland 2yr/1yr option and just pay over the mark on them. This is legitimately the last year we can really say that $65 million nucleus has the talent to go after the World Series, so we swing for the fences.

I hate myself for saying it, but my GF’s family are Cardinals fans, and I see what Jim Edmonds is doing to them as Cardinals fans and I think to myself: The man is not playing badly, let’s bring him in and have him be Michael Bourn’s Brad Ausmus/platoon. It would just kill the Cardinal nation, but I’d also feel weird about a man who’s done so much trauma to us being in our uni.

Also, do you think Tim Purpura saw the writing on the wall and just thought: I’ll back load this contract like none other, I mean, it’s no skin off my back. I won’t even be here to deal with it?

FA we sign cost us draft picks. If we finish in top half of MLB, we lose our first round pick.

So to add to the info dump in your main article about where we stand right now (taking all mine from Cot’s), the Astros opening day 25-man roster payroll was $88,930,414.

The current value of the contracts for the players on our 25-man (which is a little misleading, because it includes contracts for players acquired mid-season and ignores money still owed to Woody, Shawn, and Oscar, but is presented just as a barometer) is about $90,557,500.

As stated above, we have 5 players under contract for 2009, with a total owed salary of $65,000,000.

The following 14 players are under club control for 2009, either with a club option or by virtue of not being eligible for free agency: Jose Valverde, Ty Wiggington, Doug Brocail (option), Geoff Geary, Geoff Blum (option), Brandon Backe, Tim Byrdak, David Newhan, Wandy Rodriguez, Humberto Quintero, Chris Sampson, Hunter Pence, Michael Bourn, and Wesley Wright. Of those 14, 5 are arbitration eligible (Valverde, Wiggy, Geary, Backe, and Newhan) and would likely receive significant raises. I’m not sure what Brocail and Blum’s options are worth, but the 7 guys with less than 3 years service time won’t be getting much of a pay increase (total may be $1MM, if that). Cot’s may not be up to date on service time, so a couple of these guys may be over 3 years.

That leaves us with 6 guys that are free agents and not under contract for next year: Wolf, Ausmus, Hawkins, Loretta, Erstad, and Moehler.

Not counting any of the free agents, and not escalating any arb-eligible player salaries, we’re already looking at about $83,300,000, with six spots to fill. Some of those spots may be filled with cheap young talent (Paulino, Towles, etc), but any big name free agent is going to take the opening day payroll up in the $95-100MM range, which according to Cot’s would be a new high (they say the highest opening day payroll over the last 8 years was in 2006, when it was about $92,500,000, which must have included money owed to Bagwell. I guess the Clemens contracts weren’t figured into those numbers.

I’m assuming Drayton could stomach one big signing, but that’d have to be about it. I doubt Garland AND Pettitte would be an option, but I obviously am just a schmuck on a blog that doesn’t know any better. Sheets may be within reach, but I severely doubt Sabathia and his 8-10 year demands would be in the cards. If we try to resign Wolf, that probably cuts into the FA pitcher budget quite a bit.

I’ve always liked Baldelli, but he’s the Mark Prior of position players. If he’s heathly enough at the start of the season, I’m sure SOMEBODY will sign him. I certainly would be behind a low-risk contract. I don’t know about Edmonds. He’s playing well right now, but I don’t think he’s got too much left in the tank. He’s getting paid $8MM this year. I wouldn’t feel comfortable with any more than half that. Also, I just don’t know if I could get myself to root for the guy.

I can’t imagine what potential there would be to orchestrate a trade, but who knows? Ed did a lot of surprising last offseason (some good, some bad…. although I know a lot of people would scream: ALL BAD!).

Towles has another month and a half to do some convincing that he’s developing and may still have some potential. If the brass isn’t sold, I don’t know what they’ll do. The catcher market is pretty bleak.

Anyway, mostly just wanted to add some more data to the discussion. I’ll hang up and listen.

Ramirez. He’s a such a “toolsy” player, I’d love to see what he can do. It’d be a looonnng shot given his pretty poor minor league numbers, but he’d be a nice player to platoon in the outfield with Bourn. Yea, a player has to be on the 40 man roster to be able to be called up in September. Although they must be on the 25 man roster by 8/31 to be on the playoff roster….wishful thinking.

but the quick and dirty of what I would do at the minimum…

Sign Ben Sheets
Rotation of Oswalt, Sheets, Wandy and whoever.. Moehler/Paulino/Backe could all fight for the 4 and 5 spots.. Sheets adds 7-9 wins to what the current Astros have right now(the difference of what he can do and who he replaced) and then move the weakest link to the bullpen and then the weakest link from there to who cares.

Offense, we need an outfielder… be it center or right field(and move Pence to center). I’m leaving for a wedding so I don’t have time to actually pick someone… but give me a .270’s guy who can either run, or slug and I’ll be at least pacified.

I think those 2 moves makes this team much closer to a contender than they are now.

1 out.

2 K’s for Wolf

What matters - the only thing that matters - is rebuilding the farm system. We need to face the fact that there are no quick fixes, even if we doubled the payroll. We are not making the playoffs this year and have no better chance next year if we keep this club as is. We need to focus on players we want to keep for the 2010 season and beyond, and in my mind that is Berkman and maybe Pense. Anyone (but not everyone) else can go, including Oswalt. We want as many good A/AA prospects as we can get. And in the mean time, fill the open roster spots with some Rule 5 signings. If Drayton cuts the payroll, he will not lose much money over the next two years, and after that he should have a good, young, and still affordable team.

but you wonder if the injury history is too big a gamble. At the moment, the best CF platoon partner I can come up with is Reed Johnson. He should be a free agent unless the Cubs try to re-sign him before the FA period. He is a lefty killer with an OPS above .900 against LHP.