Great post over at True Blue LA.  The headline is

Dodgers Announce Darren Dreifort Signing at $3m discount

The gist of the article is that deferred payments to former players over the next five years are just about the same as the entire amount of the worthless 5 year/$55 millioin Dreifort signing in 2001.

The Dodgers are in serious trouble until they find new ownership.

A list of the amounts owed below the jump.

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According to ESPN's Jerry Crasnick on Twitter, Kevin Correia has been told by the Padres he's going to be non-tendered.  This comes after the very good year he had in San Diego last year.

My Correia memories aren't pleasant, but this is a guy who demonstrated significant skill improvement last year.  he can be had for about $3 million.  He'd be a perfect number 5 guy.

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As a Giants fan, I'm not quite sure what to think about Buster Posey. Everyone seems to like him, but he doesn't appear to have the hitting upside of some of the other top picks. I'm trying to figure out what I should expect as he makes his way to the big club. What's the conservative expectation? What's his upside?

Buster Posey = Russell Martin?
Buster Posey = Craig Biggio?
Buster Posey = BJ Surhoff?

Insights/comparables appreciated.

As I feared, the Reds exercised their 2008 option on Scott Hatteberg.

I'm not sure how to read this:

1. It's possible they're going to deal him so that Joey Votto can play.
   
2. It's possible they're going to move Votto to the outfield, but they just exercised their option on Adam Dunn so that seems out of the question.
   
3. (My fear) Dusty Baker gives some veteran love to Hatteberg and Votto languishes on the bench or spends a good portion of next year back in AAA.

Tim Lincecum was awesome for Fresno again last night. With the wind blowing out at 25mph, he threw seven innings, giving up no runs on four hits and two walks.  He struck out nine, threw 87 pitches, 57 strikes, with 8 groundball outs and four flyball outs.

This followed a completely dominant first start, in which he struck out nine in five innings.

His only competition is the thoroughly spent Russ Ortiz and the Giants are going to need to drum up some fan excitement given their lackluster team.

AAA appears to be little challenge.  When will they bring him up?

Brandon Phillips has debuted in Cincinnati with a huge splash -- 13 RBI in his last four starts.

As a result Tony Womack has become exendable, and one can imagine the Reds dealing Austin Kearns to open up an outfield spot for Ryan Freel if Phillips plays well.

At one time Phillips was a prospect rated at the top of the lists by John, BA and others. When he was in the Montreal organization he was rated their top prospect in 2002 over the likes of Brad Wilkerson and Grady Sizemore.  He was traded to Cleveland along with Sizemore and Cliff Lee for Bartolo Colon and was finally given a chance to play in 2003.

He has regressed steadily since then, largely because of declining plate discipline.  But he's still only 24, and he still has all the talent that led him to be considered a Top 10 prospect.

Anybody think we could be witnessing important development, or is it too late for Phillips to be anything more than a journeyman?

The ugly underbelly of the Giants 30-something strategy:

They have no picks in the first three rounds of today's amateur draft because of their early signings of Benitez, Vizquel and Matheny. Sabean could have waited on all three until their teams failed to offer them arbitration (none would have been offered arbitration), and retained the farm picks. And this was after they gave away their first picks the last two years so they could make similar signings of Neifi Perez and Michael Tucker.

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