-P- Pitcher Eric Gagne has agreed to a one-year, $10 million contract with the Brewers. Obviously, that's a lot of scratch for a reliever who collapsed badly down the stretch last year and barely played the two years before that. It also illustrates the differences between today's market and that of a couple of years ago. After the 2004 season and three consecutive years of lights-out pitching for the Dodgers, Gagne got a two-year deal that only guaranteed him $19 million. (Granted, he wasn't yet a free agent at the time, but still.)
-P- The Rangers have signed Milton Bradley to a one-year, $5 million deal. Great deal for Texas, even though you never know what you're getting with Bradley, who has a well-documented history of erratic behavior and who's coming off a pretty serious (and also well-documented) knee injury. But Bradley's been either good (2005, 2006) or borderline-great (2003, 2007) in four of his last five seasons (or, at least, the portions of those seasons when he hasn't been injured). The Rangers can also use him at DH to minimize his injury risk. When Bradley stays on the field and keeps his mouth shut, he helps his team a lot. That's a lot more than you usually get for $5 million. I've always liked him for some reason - here's hoping he keeps it together all year. Anyway, the Padres now have some pretty serious question marks in their outfield.
-P- Salomon Torres may retire rather than joining the Brewers. I think we can probably stick a fork in Torres - he's talked about retiring before, his commitment to offseason conditioning has been questioned, and now he's thinking about it again. The desire probably just isn't there anymore, and if that's the case, he's probably not going to pitch well. I think we can guess that this might have had something to do with Neal Huntington trading Torres. In any case, it appears that the players we got in return are ours to keep, even if Torres does retire.