[Westheim]

January 4 – The Portland Raccoons acquire 28-yr old INF Michael Palmer (.299, 15 HR, 171 RBI) from the Scorpions. In exchange, the Scorpions receive 34-yr old AAA SP Kenichi Watanabe (22-43, 3.91 ERA), 27-yr old C Ximenes Lopes (.096, 1 HR, 4 RBI), 20-yr old AA SS/2B Alex Arias, and 24-yr old AA OF Geoff Allen.
January 5 – The Condors trade SP Ian Ward (8-16, 4.24 ERA) to the Warriors, receiving two prospects including #144 SP T.J. Winstead.
January 6 – The Knights acquire left-hander MR Ed Bryan (22-12, 3.26 ERA, 6 SV) from the Rebels, sending them #21 prospect SS Pat Coykendall.
January 7 – The Portland Raccoons announce that they have signed veteran MR Ricardo Huerta (42-36, 3.21 ERA, 44 SV) to a 1-yr, $400k contract.

…

Palmer has been a starter for only three years, starting in 2008, his last season in the Elks organization. His defense up the middle is strong, but he has almost no experience at third base. He is the definition of singles slapper. In 2009, he had 190 hits, of which 168 were singles. So he isn’t the slugging shortstop we were looking for – at all. But there was just no option to bring in a slugging shortstop this winter, so we console ourselves with Palmer.

It looks slightly dubious whether Palmer is actually an upgrade over our existing shortstops, but for what it’s worth he has yet to fail to OPS under .700 in a full season. (But we all know what Portland does to batting stats…)

The plan for Howell and Canning now is to potentially trade one of them, depending on what other players we can identify that we would like to bring in. If everything else fails (which is the case so often), Walt Canning has another option left, but Rob Howell doesn’t.

The Palmer trade originally started by shopping Ximenes Lopes for a bag of baseballs. The Scorpions really lack a lot of things right now, and pathetically it seems like they can actually use Ximenes Lopes. We deal a significant part of our starting pitching reserve by parting with “Winless” Watanabe, but the main price in the deal is Alex Arias, who is a really promising middle infielder and was half of the pair of international signing infielders I mentioned about a year ago. Ricky Moya is the other, and remains in the organization. The Raccoons are rather high on him, but the Scorpions preferred Arias.

Ricardo Huerta becomes the second Raccoon with three distinct stints with the Critters, after the virtually omnipresent Daniel Sharp (who’s a free agent!). We took Huerta for the first time in the rule 5 draft before the 2002 season and he did a splendid job for the next four years. The second time he was acquired just before the deadling in 2009 in the complete bananas trade with the Canadiens, in which we did not only take Huerta, but also Ron Thrasher(!) AND half a million bucks(!!), for merely backup catcher Sergio Esquivel.

Unfortunately it looks a lot like we’re not going to get Takeru Sato. We keep getting outbidden and I wonder whether the increasing price is really worth for a 39-year old who doubtlessly has angered some ancient Japanese God of Nature with the horrendous BABIP’s he’s had for six years. Of course by now the free agent market has been picked thin, so if we want to acquire another quality starting pitcher, we need to look for a rebuilding team and saddle up in terms of prospects.