The M’s have signed Joel Pineiro to a three-year, $14.5M contract according to ESPN. He’ll get a $1.5M signing bonus, $2.5M next season and the rest over the final two years. I’m not exactly sure about his service time because of the brief time he spent in the majors in 2000 and 2001, but even if you count those two as a full season together, this deal doesn’t buy out any of his free agency years. On the other hand, it’s possible that even at the end of this contract, he’ll be just shy of the six years of service time needed to become a free agent.
Get home from a nice day off to find raw, unrestrained good news sitting in my inbox. The offseason needed something like this; pure, unadulterated, tremendous news. Sasaki is essentially retiring from major league baseball, and the M’s have just cleared $9.5 million ($8 million salary, $1.5 million buyout of 2005 contract) from their books that were allocated to an average right-handed reliever, of which they have in abundance.
Of course, five minutes after I read the news, my joy subsided as I realized we are likely to just convert this into Maels Rodriguez. However, I’ll save the pessimism for when Bavasi actually does waste the money, rather than anticipating the inevitable.
Great news. Going to bed on a happy note.
Sasaki. Wow. WOW!
I’ll try to not be cynical by saying the M’s will probably sit on this money rather than spend it on improvements, but it’s oh so easy to do.
And of course part of me is saying, “Why couldn’t he have decided this a few months ago, when there were still free agents available?!”
Art Thiel blasts Selig today. It’s delicious.
Sporting News is reporting Kaz Sasaki will not be returning to the Mariners, instead returning to Japan. From Ken Rosenthal’s story:
“We have been informed by his agent that Kaz has some personal family issues in Japan,” Mariners spokesman Tim Hevly says. “He may wish to remain there next year. We’re going to be as cooperative as we can be going forward with him.”
Thanks to everyone who wrote in about Melvin Bizarro — turns out that name was just too good to be true. His real name is Melvin Pizarro, so chalk this one up to a BA typo. You can find what he did last season right here. He’s, uh, not very good. But hey, he’s left-handed! And as emailer Jay Yencich notes, he “can probably hit the broad side of a barn.” So he’s got that going for him, which is nice.