Bruce Levine of ESPN 1000 reports had it first: the Astros have signed second baseman Kaz Matsui to a three year deal worth $15-16MM.

And here: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5340665.html also reports it.

If it gets rid of Burke, sign him up and write the check.  I hated that guy.

So if any of y'all read the game thread, you read about Entropic's idea for a t-shirt of the slogan "Wandilicious" and my rough design.  With some tweaks and suggestions, I have come up with this:

or this:

http://chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/4445436.html

http://houston.astros.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070104&content_id=1772763&vk ey=news_hou&fext=.jsp&c_id=hou

Really?  Do we really need another third baseman/second baseman/shortstop?  Isn't this what Burke, Lamb, and Bruntlett are for???

I know many people here aren't big fans of the Yankees, but I felt it should be mentioned.

A small plane crashed into a New York City building today, piloted by Cory Lidle, a Yankees pitcher.  He is confirmed dead.  There's no word on whether there was anyone else in the plane, but it is believed that no one else was.

Story

It's getting to the point where there's little to be done on the offensive front now that Giles is off the market.  But, I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing.  

To me, McLane needs to focus more on a quality pitcher, because we're going to need another one either to off-set the loss of Clemens or to off-set the lack of experience of the Wandy/Zeke duo.  If we get "lucky" and Clemens comes back for one more shot, another quality pitcher would make our fifth starter Brandon Backe, with Wandy as our spot-starter for Clemens' injuries (because you know he'll have them)/lefty in the bullpen.  That would, if you can believe it, make our starting rotation even better then 05's.  If Clemens doesn't come back, having 2/5's of our rotation bogged down by the Wandy/Zeke duo means that we lose a lot of our pitching force.  

Furthermore, I think Purpura needs to stop hanging on so tightly to his minor leaguers.  Other then Nieve and Bucholz, there's no one else down there worth seriously holding onto for now.  Our team is basically a young team, so unless we're forced to make a fire-sale at some point, I don't see the core of it changing for at least two to three years, perhaps longer then that.  Zeke would also make good tradebait for a team looking for moldable young pitching, which I've heard is all the rage this year.  Luke Scott is also a good trade item.  He's major league ready, but we have no use for him then situational hitting.  

A Zeke/Scott/random minor leaguer could pull in something good, perhaps a better backup catcher.  I still think Aussie deserves to be first string, but we need a young, decent hitting catcher to take over in a year or two.  Perhaps Adam LaRue?

Looking at the core members of our lineup, I don't think there's anywhere we could make a serious change for now, with Bags still on the payroll.  If he's expecting to play first, that pushes Berkman out to LF.  Willy has proved that he deserve to start in CF on Opening Day, along with Jason Lane at RF.  In fact, I think out of all our players, we'll see the most improvement out of Willy this next year.  He never really got a chance to be in the minors, so he did the best with what he could and that was his running.  Once he learned he could get on base with his feet, he stopped trying to hit the ball and just tried to outrun everything.  Once he learns to hit again, I think he'll really explode.

The person I feel who is the most expendable is Everett, but at what cost?  I'm not sure there is a quality shortstop out there with a bat so infinitely better that it cancels out his stellar defense.  I also think we'll see a little improvement out of him this coming year.  He had just come off a bad hand injury and I know from experience that they can mess things up for a long time.  Some people never fully recover from them if the bones broke in the wrong places.  I'm not sure how much he was hindered by that, if at all, but I still expect a slight improvement.  If we had a chance to get Furcal, that might have been something, but we didn't.  

Personally, I think the Astros just need to get a good pitcher, resign Ausmus and Palmeiro, and see what happens.  The time for McLane to do damage, IMO, is at the trade deadline in July.  At that point, everyone will have a better sense of how much this team is going to grow over the offseason and it might be more clear at that point who is expendable and who is not.  Also, there might be some better options out there then what we have now.  

I don't want to say this a transition year, because I don't think it is.  The Astros have a legitimate shot of going as far again.  We are however, binded by the fate of a reckless free agent.  I want to tell Clemens to stuff it where the sun don't shine, but I don't think that'll happen.  I think there comes a point where he is more of a liability then not and he's popular with the fans/media, so I think they'll do everything to keep him here.  Free agents are always our downfall.