BUILDING FOR: Nothing.
TARGETS: None.
This is not a good team, it’s not getting better, and no amount of offseason tinkering is going to make it a good team….the M’s might as well stand pat this winter. They have nothing to gain by doing otherwise.

Well, he’s back with his analysis of the “excellent move” the M’s made in signing Figgins. It’s actually not bad, inasmuch as his caveats are the things you would expect (aging, mostly) although he weirdly equates Beltre’s 2004 HR totals with Figgins 2009 walk rate (one was park-dependent and a clear blip, the other is not, and is part of a multi-year trend).

But he has no explanation of how a team that had no targets, nothing to build for, and nothing to gain by acquiring players is nevertheless doing an “excellent” job of doing just that.

(Yeah, I know: fish, barrel, shotgun. It’s still comical).

If the Angels aren’t looking for a replacement 3B, what does that do to the market for Beltre? His field shrinks to … Baltimore, Minnesota, San Francisco … ??

Maybe the Rockies, who didn’t seem particularly happy with either Atkins or Stewart last year. Seems unlikely though; Beltre’s biggest potential suitor was the Phillies, of course, before that idea got Polanco’d.

It’s really a shame for Beltre that Mike Lowell is signed though next season: Adrian would have lots of fun hitting balls at (and over) the Monster, and playing daily for Boston would finally allow his defensive wizardry to get the adulation it deserves.

I thought the line was they were waiting for Monday for Beltre to officially decline arbitration before wrapping this up.

Yeah, I was wondering if that could be a consideration as well — announcing his replacement before Beltre has even opted out has a certain disrespectful “don’t let the door hit you” air to it. And who knows, maybe the Figgins contract is contingent on Beltre not accepting. (Though I do love the idea of Beltre fielding 3B and Figgins playing 2B)

…and have Gary Matthews hanging around their neck like the proverbial millstone…

Speaking of Matthews, and Silva, they both make an appearance (one after the other!) on The Ten Worst Baseball Contracts of the 2000s over at Yahoo. It’s worth reading as an amuse bouche leading into the Winter Meetings: the decade may be almost over, but it’s quite possible at least one contract announced in the next few days will be a candidate for such a list in the future. And while we can certainly quibble with the rankings (and the inclusion of some at the expense of others) the article is entertaining and stat-nerd friendly; consider this passage regarding the very Mr Matthews:

Sure, Matthews would be a candidate for the list based on performance alone. He’s an awful center fielder with an inconceivably bad -37.8 UZR/150 last year….surely the Angels knew that Matthews’ productive 2006 was due to a spike in batting average on balls in play (.349, almost 50 points higher than his career average)

As you would expect there are a lot of pitchers on the list — though number one came as something of a surprise to me, mostly because I’d completely forgotten him. But once you get past the usual suspects (Zito, Pavano, etc) what really struck me is how many are from the Dodgers — a team that I hadn’t previously thought of as being plagued by bad contracts this decade. I guess I just don’t pay enough attention to the NL, and the Dodgers have been fairly successful (albeit in a generally weak division) in spite of it, but for Dodger fans it almost sounds like their Bavasi era went on and on and on. Which puts their recent decision to not offer arbitration to anybody in a different light: apparently, dumb decisions aren’t quite as unusual there as I thought.