The Atlanta Braves appear to be on the verge of signing SS Rafael Furcal, the same Furcal who spent six years with us earlier this decade. The 2000 Rookie of the Year would be accepting a 3 year deal with a fourth year option, probably in the range of $11M per year. Cool, we got Furcal back. Great. He plays left field right? No no no he's a starting pitcher! Wait no his arm's good enough to play those positions, but he's a shortstop. A SHORTSTOP. Let's consider the many holes the Braves have in their lineup, excluding pitching. Left field. Center field. Right field (should Francoeur's downward spiral continue). Leadoff hitter. Power hitting righty. What does Furcal fit? Leadoff hitter... and.... aaaand........ well he's a switch hitter at least! Look, Frank, if you're going to sign Furcal in order to make Kelly Johnson or Yunel Escobar a trading chip, can you make the trade first at least? Trade Escobar while we appear reluctant to do so (like, for Peavy?) and then just go sign Furcal cause you were going to anyway. Then we'd have Furcal and Peavy for the next four years. Now we have one too many middle infielders, and sure we could consider moving Kelly back to left field since he's pretty awful defensively at second, but I don't see that happening. I expect to see Kelly traded and Furcal leading off, playing second. But now that teams know we need to trade Kelly, won't we get less value in return than we would have a week ago? Think of it like Fantasy Baseball, you drafted Hanley Ramirez.. five rounds later you draft Rafael Furcal thinking this other team got this pitcher you like, and they don't have a good SS. So you offer Furcal for the pitcher and he says screw you, give me Hanley you can make Furcal ride the bench. No deal is made and you wasted your fifth round pick. Wren better have some kind of brilliant move ready to follow up this signing, or I will continue to be disappointed with his ability as a GM (I almost want to chalk up the Jurrjens trade to Schuerholz setting it up and the Tigers losing their minds).On another note, the Padres front office has announced that the Peavy talks appear to be over now that no one has stepped in to negotiate after the Cubs dropped out. The Padres appear to be content with keeping the ace. I'll say it again, with Furcal on the roster, can we please just throw the original offer back to the Padres (Yunel, Gorkys and a pitcher like Morton) and try one last time to snag the Cy Young winner? Read Full Article!
