Aside from a little dithering about a possible backup outfielder, it's looking like the Astros are likely finished with their off-season acquisitions following a flurry of activity yesterday and today.  Ed Wade seems to be patching holes and biding time, here.  None of his moves can really be called "impact signings", and given what we know about the payroll, I would be surprised if the Astros make one by the end of the off-season.

All introductions aside, let's take a look at what he spent and who he spent it on.

Gains:

• Brian Moehler.  $3MM, one year deal.  After he made 29 starts for the Astros this year, the most he's made since his 2000 season with the Tigers, we should all be very familiar with Moehler.  An aging finesse pitcher with mediocre stuff, Moehler makes his living at the corners of the strike zone.  His 5.30/2.97 strikeout/walk rate through nine innings was close in line with his career levels, as was his 44.3% groundball rate.  Everything about Moehler is mediocre.  He's an average #5 starter, and that's what he'll likely be this year.  The price isn't bad, until you take a look at pitchers like Wesley Wright, Jeff Fulchino, and Yorman Bazardo who might turn in a similar performance for an MLB minimum salary.  My take: An iffy move.  Moehler is serviceable as a #5 guy, but paying $3 million for a performance so easily and cheaply replaced is wasteful with the payroll so tight.
• Geoff Blum.  $1.5MM, one year plus mutual option.  The state of third base was bad enough last year for the Astros that Blum became the primary starter.  A reputation for good defense didn't pay off when Blum provided a league average glove at the hot corner, and his bat fell right in line with his career averages, at .247/.314/.367.  At 36 years old, it's a valid question whether his defense is on a downhill slide.  Blum is a decent bat and utility infielder for the bench, and that's the role he'll play next season.  The bigger question is why he was brought back when we already have Jeff Keppinger filling an almost identical role.  My take: Not bad, but redundant.  Would Blum have been brought back if Wade knew ahead of time that he would be signing Pedro Feliz for third base?
• Matt Lindstrom.  Salary to be determined in arbitration, probably $1.5MM.  Lindstrom was acquired from the Marlins in trade for a couple of marginal low-level prospects and the Astro's first rule 5 draft pick.  He has lightning stuff, hitting up to 102 MPH on the radar gun at times, and experience as both an 8th inning setup guy and closer.  He's coming off an injury-plagued season in which he posted a 5.89 ERA, but he was much better in '07 and '08.  He has great potential, with decent strikeout and groundball rates, but he has walked too many batters in the past two seasons.  If he can improve his control under Brad Arnsberg's tutelage, he could become an elite closer.  My take: A good move.  We didn't give up anything we're likely to miss, and got a cheap, high-upside closer in return.
• Brandon Lyon.  $15MM over three years.  At first glance, it's easy to see why Ed Wade was interested in Brandon Lyon; not only did he post a 2.86 ERA in 78 innings this year, he did it in the American League.  His peripheral numbers were, however, not so good.  His strikeout/walk rates over nine innings were a middling 6.52/3.55, coupled with an average groundball rate and an unnaturally low batting average on balls in play.  He does have experience in late inning situations, however.  My take: Far, far too expensive.  This deal would be understandable at half the price--not so much at $5 million per year.  Lyon is an average middle reliever, a useful arm to have in the bullpen, but it's difficult to understand why he was overpaid so significantly, especially when we already have so many talented MLB minimum players like Arias, Fulchino, and Gervacio.
• Pedro Feliz.  $4.5MM, one year deal.  Ed Wade sure likes bringing players over from his old ballclub, doesn't he?  Feliz biggest attraction is that he is an elite defender at third base, though his defense appears to be tailing off as he gets older.  He also has a little bit of power, just enough to nudge him up to the .700 OPS range.  He should be an improvement over Geoff Blum in both offense and defense, though not a major upgrade.  My take: The price is right, and the player is decent, taken in isolation.  In context of the overall picture, signing Feliz helps turn team defense into a strength, but does little to improve the team's flagging offense.  A bigger impact signing would have been better, but after having hamstrung himself with other moves, perhaps this was the best Wade could do.
• Two draft picks.  If Ed Wade was only picking one player to offer arbitration, he picked the right one.  Jose Valverde declined, and as a Type A free agent, he will net us two draft picks when he signs elsewhere.  One will be supplementary between the first and second rounds, and the other will be either in the first or second round, depending on which team signs him.

Losses:

• Jose Valverde.  One of the NL's better closers, Valverde had a good year, other than a calf injury which cost him some saves.  His 2.33 ERA was one of the best among NL closers, though his peripherals were down from the year before.  My take:  With the loss of an elite closer, the Astros bullpen is much worse than it was.  That said, Valverde was a nearly surefire bet to net us two important draft picks, and that worked out exactly as expected with him declining arbitration.  Taking him off the books also frees up payroll, which gave us the flexibility to make the mostly-dubious signings above.  Still, those two draft picks are arguably the brightest spot so far in the off-season, and should help speed the rebuilding process.
  
• Miguel Tejada.  It's safe to say that the approximately .800 OPS shortstop/potential third baseman will not be brought back now that Pedro Feliz has been signed.  He was a poor contributor at shortstop defensively, but might have been better at third base.  My take:  Tejada was a big part of our offense this year, and without him, the batting order looks much weaker.  Worse, we got nothing from his departure, not having traded him at the deadline or offered him arbitration.  In hindsight, he should have been traded at the deadline, though at the time it still looked like the Astros might have a shot at contending.  Hindsight is 20/20, they say, but I still think Wade made the wrong move holding onto him.  The arbitration issue is foggier.  Tejada apparently wants a multi-year deal, and might have rejected it, though the payday would have been large enough that it's also easy to see him accepting.  If he had accepted, it would have been a crippling expense, so it's understandable that arbitration was not offered, at the very least.
• LaTroy Hawkins.  LaTroy Hawkins had a nearly career year in 2009, posting a 2.13 ERA on the back of an unnaturally high Left On Base percentage.  He is nonetheless a solid 8th inning reliever, with a decent groundball rate and strikeout rate to go with good control, and he helped make the bullpen one of the team's only strengths this year.  My take:  By not offering Hawkins arbitration, not only did the Astros lose a chance to get more draft picks, they also improved the market for the aging reliever and likely caused his departure by doing so.  Had he declined, the draft picks would have been quite valuable; had he accepted, he would have been more reasonably priced (and still a better reliever) than Brandon Lyon.  As it is, we get nothing for his departure.  It seems Ed Wade and/or Drayton McLane let fear of having to pay for both Valverde and Hawkins influence their reasoning here, and that was a mistake.

Overall Verdict:  C-

If you look at the order of Ed Wade's decisions this off-season (I have listed them mostly chronologically, with a couple exceptions), you can see a pattern beginning to emerge: the front office worked from the edges inward, beginning by signing secondary players and working their way in.  First, Wade signed a spot or #5 starter and a utility infielder for the bench.  Then, he signed a couple of iffy bullpen arms who might be able to pitch in high leverage situations for us.  Finally, he worked his way down to third base, almost as an afterthought.  All told, he spent $15.5MM spread thinly across five mediocre or questionable players.

The trouble with this is that he didn't do much to improve the team.  A cannier GM might have worked his way from core players up, understanding that you build from the foundation before you start applying the sheet rock and paint.  To my knowledge--and don't quote me on this--no free agent has yet signed for more than $10 million per year.  Some of the names that have been picked up include Randy Wolf, Chone Figgins, Rich Harden, and Brad Penny, among others.  All of these players have the potential to make a significant positive impact on their ball clubs in 2010.  Can you honestly say the same about any of the players the Astros signed?

So why do I give Wade a (barely) passing grade?  For one thing, he got us two draft picks by offering Valverde arbitration.  For another thing, he did provide some modicum of stability around which a few breakout seasons by young players (Norris, Towles, Castro, Paulino, Manzella) might, as a very long shot, allow us to contend.

But that stability would be better provided by two good players than five or six mediocre ones who are barely an improvement over what we already have.