Today's Moves

Your newest Mariner: former Angel (stunning, I know) Jake Woods, a 24 year old lefty who, like any self-respecting southpaw who couldn't cut it as a starter, is trying his damndest to make it as a LOOGY. I'd say he fits the profile:

• Effective against lefties in limited time last year (.229/.283/.354, 48 AB's)
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• Sucked against righties
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• More games than innings pitched

Woods will presumably duke it out with Luis Gonzalez and Matt Thornton for the mop-up lefty role in Spring Training. Another harmless acquisition who's upside is that it becomes that much more likely that we never see Matt Thornton in a Mariner uniform again, which is something I can get behind.

Several million miles away, the Texas Rangers are still active, having met with Kevin Millwood and swung a trade with San Diego. To the Padres go Chris Young, Adrian Gonzalez, and Terrmel Sledge; to the Rangers go Adam Eaton, Akinori Otsuka, and the humorously-named Billy Killian. Adam Morris is less than thrilled. Cherry-picking a few of his comments:

In essence, the Rangers have added payroll while making their rotation worse and losing two moderately valuable bargaining chips. Eaton's a free agent next year and is said to be looking for something in the neighborhood of $27m/3yr (and possibly more, with the way the market's shaping up), and Otsuka's a 34 year old reliever who saw a significant performance dropoff between 2004 and 2005.

Adam's right. That's just a bad, bad trade.