New Britain, Detroit, Montgomery and Arizona broke the ice on free agency, signing the first A and B players.
The Spitfires inked reliever Rudy Cole, who had spent all 9 years of his career in Vancouver. Cole has a "Nuke Laloosh reputation" (million-dollar arm, or in this case $12.5MM over 2 years, and a 5 cent head). sneekes is betting his as-yet-unnamed new pitching coach can restore him to his Season 4 Fireman Of The Year glory.
Detroit front-loaded a 3-year deal to get infielder Greg Evers, a 9-year vet looking to bounce back from a bad year. Evers is an excellent defender with a Grade A arm and thunder in his bat (228 homers). GM rockindock has assembled one of the league's better defensive infields with Evers at 2B, Alberto Owen at SS and Ismael Mercado at 3B.
Montgomery grabbed a potential bargain in IF Alex Gonzalez, who's coming off a monster 200-hit, .333/27/92 campaign. GM cbriese is marvelling at the Biscuits' good fortune this off-season, having added SS Gus Harper and 3B Gonzalez for the price of $6.1MM a year (Gonzalez), and a run-of-the-mill reliever.
Arizona ponied up $32MM and change to nab George Carter, an excellent reliever with absolutely amazing recovery abilities. Carter has never started a game in the majors, yet has thrown as many as 189 innings in a season. He's coming off a pair of relatively poor seasons - let's see if the change of venue puts him back on track.
While there are quite a few solid players available this year, all await the decision of the 1 marquis name: James Martin, former ROY and 2-time MVP who bolted on the Gansta' Chimps after 8 hugely productive seasons. Oddsmakers are saying it's 50-50 on whether he'll land a max contract.
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