Mariners adopt McLaughlin Plan

Has Walter ever been seen in the same room as Bill Bavasi?

Quick, Kenny Williams, bid $10M on Juan Gonzalez before it's too late.

(Sorry, non-authors; I offer a string of inside jokes that I would just ruin by explaining)

I've just read that the M's have agreed to an incentive-laden 1-year/$5M deal (with $9M option for 2008) with damaged goods, namely, Jose Guillen.

I can guarantee that this, too, is not the Tatonka of '07. You just can't sell the kind of selfish ass that is Guillen as if he were an important piece of a "win back the fans" PR campaign.

Still and all, that's not a bad thing. Sure, you can't buy fiery leadership (see Spiezio, Scott; also see Everett, Carl), but that's also not what the M's are buying here. Instead, they're taking a chance on a guy whose bat will come cheaper than it should BECAUSE he's damaged goods.

This move has all kinds of ways to bite us, but it's not going to make the difference between a winning and losing season, so...meh.

Just as with the rumored Thomson acquisition, what's going on here is the Mariners' front office is taking medium-sized risks with small amounts of cash in the hopes of enjoying, well, medium-sized rewards. At best. For now, I'll leave it up to Tad to fit Thomson and Guillen and Lehr into his Offseason Plan goals, but my math says that these guys aren't getting us anywhere near the ~200 runs we figure we need to improve. Thus, it remains the case that we have the worst team in our weak four-team division. But hey, there's still some cash left for ownership to pocket, so kudos to them for winning at this whole capitalism thing.

Now go get a real pitcher to bolster the staff! Grrrr.