The Hot Stove League is heating up!

 

 so, the much heralded japanese thirdbaseman, iwamura, gets to negotiate a deal with none other than the horribly craptastic devil rays.  what about matsuzaki, well, the redsox threw a whole chunk of change to get the rights to talk to him, about 51 million dollars!

sure the rays can beat a lot of n.l. teams because they do have a pretty good offense and some good pitching, but all is relative. they cant really beat anyone in the a.l., so they are bad.

on the japanese phenom pitcher, i would not pay 51 mill. to negotiate with him if he was the nex brendan ryan/roger clemens/bob gibson. it does not matter, but the sox think he is worth it. this is also a strategic move so the yankees cant have him, because they dont really have to sign him. if they dont sign him within the next 30 days, he goes back to japan and they get the money back. so, no one gets him and the sox are fine with that. i think they are going to negotiate a deal though for about 3 years.

on the cards, not much going on except that jimmy edmonds had some work done on his shoulder, a supposedly minor procedure. hopefully everything is going to go alright with that shoulder and jimmy can give us a productive year in the ‘07 season.

dont look now but there seems to be some interest in mark mulder, now its coming from the bluejays. they are thinking of offering him a one year deal with incentives, i thought that was walt’s thing.

also, a rumor that has circled around the cardinal blogoshere, the cubs are interested in jason marquis. i would love that to happen. so he can come to busch III, get booed and get shelled at the same time. did you know that marquis is derosa’s best friend? come on hendry, pull the trigger, you know you want to.

thats the hot stove rap up for today.

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