Wednesday, January 03, 2007

AL East: Signings, Trades...oh my

The AL East keeps busy as the Red Sox signed a pitcher, the Yankees signed another and have almost completed the Big Unit trade.
The Red Sox signed Joel Pineiro to a one year, $4 million deal. They fully intend to have him compete for the closer's job. It seems the Sox are trying to find a bargain at closer now that Papelbon is back in the rotation.

The Yankees are apparently close to completing the Randy Johnson trade as he has already agreed to an extension with Arizona. One player we know that will be coming to New York in this deal is reliever Luis Vizcaino. They also signed an agreement in principle with Doug Mientkiewicz.

The Yanks lose a starter who has struggled in his two years with New York with ERA+ of 117 and 88, although he threw 200 IPs in each year. Arizona is hoping he returns to his 2004 form where he had a 171 ERA+ in 245.7 innings for a team that was absolutely awful. Along with shedding Johnson's salary and picking up a couple prospects, New York adds a reliever who had an ERA+ of 110, 119 and 133 in the past three year, all years in which he threw over 65 innings. This trade deepens their bullpen but they are placing a lot of expectations on Carl Pavano bouncing back from his injury problems.
And a quick scan across the league....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well the Johnson trade is done. I was worried that the Yankees would get a couple of their better prospects but Ohlendorf looks ton be the best they'll get. I was worried when reports of them picking up Owens and/or Nippert. Damn Yankees though, Vizcaino isn't anything to sneeze at and is a good bet to be solid for them. Johnson could dominate in Arizona or just fall totally apart and neither outcome would surprise me. I hate that the Yankees keep trading Vets for prospect because let's face it, none of the prospects they picked up look like studs but there's still a chance any one of them could be good. Oh well, even though the Jays beat up on Johnson, he still worried me when they played. At least the Jays won't have to play him anymore.