My favorite part of February and March is watching the Triple-A vets and near-retirees find minor league contracts.

But not every minor league contract is created equal...the Brewers have brought back Russell Branyan!

Like many players from the Brewers teams of a few years ago, he probably doesn't have what it takes to make the roster, but even if we only get a couple weeks of him whiffing and hitting a couple of light-tower shots to mix things up, I'll take it.

For those of you who are confused by my headline, Branyan's nickname in certain crowds is "TTO," which stands for Three True Outcomes.  The three true outcomes are strikeouts, walks, and home runs--that is, the events that don't involve fielders at all.  Adam Dunn is a more prominent TTO guy, and Gorman Thomas is a good example from Brewers history, but Russell will always be first in our hearts.

Update [2008-2-21 17:7:38 by Jeff]: Tomo Ohka's signed, too...but thankfully not by us.

I wonder if, at any point other than the time that Kevin Mench came to Milwaukee in the Carlos Lee deal, he actually had trade value.  Sure, he was always in trade rumors, for years before he came to Milwaukee, and more or less continuously after he arrived.

But now that he has hit the open market (granted, not at the peak of his career, or at least the peak of what he's done so far), we know what teams really think of him.

He signed with the Rangers (it's a Doug Melvin round trip!) on a minor league deal.

A minor league deal!  That means he'll be competing with Nelson Cruz (remember him?) for a bench job.  

Now that Podsednik and Mench are off the market and it looks like Damian Miller is headed for retirement, there aren't many veteran Brewers to keep an eye on.  I suppose someone could sign Tony Graffanino to a minor league deal and supervise his rehab, but...well...I'd rather count down the seconds to pitchers and catchers reporting that go on full-time Graffy watch.

I liked Scott Podsednik for a while, but no amount of nostalgia can cover up for his degree of inability.  He's not good enough to cover center field in the majors anymore, he never had any power, and now he's fragile, too.  Getting older and getting injured isn't helping his speed, either.

So, now, he's little more than a minor league spring training flyer, this year with the Rockies.  Maybe he's still useful as a backup outfielder, but I'm glad it's somebody else finding out, not the contending 2008 Brewers.

He's a National, anyway.

If you wondered just how far Johnny's stock has fallen, he's now Paul LoDuca insurance in Washington for a grand total of $1.25 million.

I suppose that Estrada hunted for the best shot at playing time, and with LoDuca recovering from injury, the Nationals gave him that.  But despite all of our dislike for Estrada and the fact that players generally don't sign cheaper deals with the teams that non-tender them, I have to think that Estrada would be worth $1MM more than, say, Eric Munson.  Especially if he could get that OBP back over .300.

Yeah, so this is what passes for news these days.

Abraham Nunez was invited to camp.  He's on a minor league deal, so there's no reason to complain about picking up such a weakling; he's great insurance in case Counsell needs to start and we need a backup infielder.  Nunez got a whole lot of starts over Wes Helms in Philly the last couple of years, for whatever that's worth.

And the Red Sox, who have been very quiet this offseason, signed Dan Kolb.  I hope Danny likes Pawtucket as much as he liked Indianapolis.

If you had told me in October that Mike Cameron could be had for a $5MM, one-year deal, I would've been spared an awful lot of thinking.  Given the free-agent/trade options, this is the best possible outcome for the Brewers, and it isn't even close.

First of all, I should say that I'm really surprised Doug Melvin opted for the Braun-to-LF, Hall-to-3B scenario.  If this was Strat-o-Matic, that would be obviously the right move, but even a hardcore stathead like me can see that it might not be the best idea to move Billy for the second year in a row, and to give Braun something else to think about in his first full season in the bigs.

Now that it's done, though, I think it'll be ok.  Of course Hall has played plenty of third base in his life, and--knock on wood--I can't see his bat suffering any more than it did last year.  I'm a bit more worried about Braun, but LF is probably the easiest position on the diamond, and he's an athletic guy.  What's more, he's got three and a half months until Opening Day to get after it.

On to the good part.  Mike Cameron is quite possibly the best defensive center fielder in baseball.  This move improves our defensive substantially at two positions--3B and CF--and it probably makes Braun less of a liability in that regard.

Better still, Cameron is a solid offensive contributor.  His unadjusted stats--242/328/431--are not too inspiring for 2007 in Petco, but taking the park into account, that's an above-average offensive player at a premium defensive position.  And it's the worst he's hit since 1998.  While Menchkins was (were? I'm not up to speed on the grammar of platoon names) decent last year, their park-adjusted stats were not as good.

In addition to having two position players switch spots, there is a negative: Cameron's 25-game suspension to open the season.  It's certainly not ideal, but if that's what meant we could get him for $5MM instead of $10MM (which is probably what he's worth on a one-year deal), it's a small price to pay.  Either Gwynn will hold down the fort for a few weeks, or Hart will play center and Gross, etc. will cover right.  Not a huge loss either way.

There's one more negative: LaPorta is now blocked.  If Braun is in left, I think it's safe to assume that he's not going back to third anytime soon.  I'm not sure how big of a deal this is.  There was speculation from draft day on that LaPorta was drafted as trade bait for the 2008 or '09 club.  Maybe that'll still happen.  Or maybe Corey Hart will go on the block, with Braun moving to right.  Whatever happens, it probably won't happen this year, and the current alignment of the team gives us many more reasons to be excited about 2008 than anything beyond that.

One more interesting aspect here.  I assumed all along that however we filled the 3B/LF/CF gap, it would involve trading Capuano.  It certainly looked that way when the Rolen trade was on the table.  While Cappy is no more than a 4th starter right now, he's still quite useful.  A rotation of Sheets/Gallardo/Suppan/Cappy/Bush projects a whole lot better than anything involving Vargas, and it  means Villanueva can either contribute from the pen, or be the #6 guy, as (inevitably) need be.  It also gives us the chance to deal Cappy at the deadline for whatever we need then--maybe he'll bounce back in the first half and we'll get more value for him in July than we would right now.

If you can't tell, I'm ecstatic.  Signing Cameron for five million bucks erases all the stupidity of the Estrada/Mota/Wise disaster, and more.

Here's the link.  

It's a reclamation project, but it's a heck of a lot smarter (assuming the money is reasonable) than some of the reliever projects that the Cardinals took on last offseason.  This isn't going to change my assessment of the Cards chances in 2008--basically a straight shot at third place--but it is an improvement.

Jinxie  is finalizing a two-year deal with the Phillies.

It's $13MM for two years, with an option for 2010 that kicks in at a certain number of plate appearances.  This is a decent deal for all sides--Jenks gets the multiple years he was looking for, and $6.5MM per year is probably about what he is worth.

And hey, if he takes advantage of the bandbox that is Citizen's Bank Park, he might just score another multi-year deal when this is over.

Good luck, Geoff--may you occasionally hit home runs off of Matt Wise, but never off of Guillermo Mota.

The Mets signed Matt Wise to a one-year deal.

Let's review the transactions here:

1. Brewers traded Johnny Estrada to the Mets instead of non-tendering him.
2. Brewers acquire Guillermo Mota in the deal, along with his $3.2MM salary for 2008.  Mets fans rejoice.
3. Mets get a better catcher and non-tender Estrada.  That's what we probably would've done, so the Mets literally dumped Mota's contract on us.
4. We have a roster crunch and have to non-tender Matt Wise.  Mota may be the worst pitcher in the pen right now, so we basically kept Mota instead of Wise.
5. Mets sign Wise, probably for less than half of what the Brewers will pay Mota.

The only way this is defensible to me AT ALL is if the Brewers know something about Mota or Wise that we don't know.  Maybe Mota is ready to bounce back (though he doesn't have that lengthy of a good track record) and maybe Wise really is done after hitting Pedro Lopez in the face.  I guess we'll see.  It's also possible that, when Melvin traded for Mota, he couldn't imagine that he'd be able to get three more superior relievers in Gagne, Riske, and Torres, and didn't think Mota's acquisition would mean we couldn't keep Wise.

But, regardless of the thought process, this doesn't make me happy.  I wasn't happy about losing Wise before, but losing Wise to the Mets is even more obnoxious.

For the record, my projections have Mota pitching 68 innings with an ERA of 4.48, 25 walks and 48 strikeouts.  Wise projects with an ERA of 4.56, 61 IP, 20 walks and 42 K's.  I would've thought Wise would come out a little better, but that's a projection for Miller Park with the Brewers defense, so it's probably almost identical if you neutralize everything.  I'd certainly bet on Wise to have the better year.  Either way, even if the results are similar, the Brewers are going to pay more for their middle reliever.

It's Jim Edmonds to the Padres for a prospect.  The Cards get some salary relief (though I gather they are sending some money to SD), and a big hole in center field.

The Cards do have a solid CF prospect in Colby Rasmus, but he hasn't played above Double-A, so it's hard to imagine he'll make much of an impact before 2009.  That means there's got to be another move coming.  I would be surprised if the Cards got in on Mike Cameron...that wouldn't be much of an improvement, and it would likely mean multiple years, blocking Rasmus.  Maybe Kenny Lofton as a rental?  Corey Patterson?

Unless the Reds pull off something big, this is increasingly looking like another year of Cubs-Brewers, and not much else.  The Astros might have made themselves worse even in the short term by acquiring Tejada, and while Edmonds isn't the player he once was, he's probably better in '08 than whoever replaces him.  Prepare yourselves, folks: it'll be another year of the word "weak" attaching itself to "NL Central."