Giants Sign Zito

Surely you're all aware of this by now, but Barry Zito has signed an enormous 7 year, $126 million contract with the Giants that parallels the extension Vernon Wells recently signed with the Jays. The trouble with this is that this is just deck chairs on the Titanic for the Giants. They won just 76 games last year with a geriatric roster, and they already lost Jason Schmidt, who's just as good as (if not better than) Zito, and a very productive outfielder in Moises Alou. 2006 draftee Tim Lincecum aside, there isn't too much coming through their farm system in the near future, either. Meanwhile, the Dodgers, Diamondbacks and, to a lesser extent, the Rockies, all have up-and-coming young teams, and the Padres are still in decent shape. Even with this signing, the Giants aren't too likely to contend next year, let alone three years from now, when they could be horrible. They really need to trade some of their older players and rebuild, but that doesn't sound like something GM Brian Sabean would be interested in doing.

In the only other move in the past few days that even made a dent in the headlines, the Marlins signed Aaron Boone to a cheap contract. Boone's only marginally useful now and, with Dan Uggla, Hanley Ramirez and Miguel Cabrera manning second, short and third, the Marlins don't need him to start. No one will really notice Boone this year, unless the Marlins and Red Sox make the World Series, in which case there'll be about eighty-two annoying articles written about him every day.