Okay, so the M's are apparently kicking the tires on Matt Diaz and Hideki Matsui. Let's just take a quick snapshot of what this means.
First of all, scrap heap = yay.
Okay, now that that's out of the way...
Update: Matt Diaz signed with the Pirates. Matt Diaz would presumably platoon with Michael Saunders in LF, which is a pretty sorry state of affairs for Saunders and his future with the club, but perhaps they're still trying to fix his swing vs. lefties. On a team that's going to lose more games than they win, why not let Saunders learn on the field, but hey, I'm not paid to make those decisions.
So Matt Diaz (not Dee-Ahz, mind you it's DIE-as, as in "he died as gracefully as one could with pantyhose on") - his splits vs. left handed pitchers in his career (damn near 800 PA's, so it's plenty to go on): Triple slash of .334/.373/.533. That ain't bad, in fact, that's pretty nice for a player that will be virtually free. Not a lot of power, but good gap hitter off lefties, and he's also regarded as a pretty good defensive player. As a regular with the Braves, he had a few nice seasons, posting WAR of 2.2, 3.0, and 2.6. He wasn't very good at all last year, and age might be catching up with him, but this is a move that at least makes me raise an eyebrow.
Hideki Matsui, yes Godzilla himself, is about 128 years old and still would have easily been our second best hitter last year. If the knees hold up and he can play 140 games for you, you can almost assuredly pencil in .270/20/85 as DH. He made $6 mil last year, and I'd imagine he's looking for something similar, so I'm not sure he's worth twice the money it might take to bring in Russel the Muscle to do virtually the same - but it also has to be said that Branyan is probably less likely to be healthy next year, which should really make him cry just a little since Matsui has a weekly scheduled cup of coffee with father time.
The plus side of all this dumpster diving for Jack Z is we didn't give $126 million to anyone this offseason
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