bleh

I stayed home all day today for the most part too. I worried that driving might be a bad idea. Honestly, I played a lot of Puzzle Pirates. I joined a crew on a whim when I got a crew offer from a friend. I don't know if it'll be permanent. Though I can tell colin_l that he'd be pleasantly surprised if he looked at his crew list if he ever logged in again ;) Also, Weaver finally got me playing Spades. Bleh. He'll burn for this.

I took apart my Pop'n'Music controller today, but I can't actually figure out how to dislodge the buttons or replace the microcontrollers. I probably need pliers, and I don't seem to have a pair around here anywhere. I wish I could just move to Japan so I could just play PNM in the arcade.

I am still coughing up phlegm. It sucks. One minute I feel great, the next minute I'm suffocating and coughing. Bleh. I did leave the house once today, to go to Safeway to get stuff to make sandwiches. I wanted chicken salad, but the deli was closed so I ended up with packaged cold cuts. Sandwiches do make for happier cheap meals, but I hope I don't get bored of eating them for the next few days.

I have a baseball post to make, too.

this post is about baseball

Kevin Millwood goes to the Cleveland Indians :( Oh well, at least maybe I'll get to see him pitch sometime this year, I've even got a Cleveland game on my 16-game plan.

Beltran is not returning to the Astros ha ha ha ha ha ha. Okay, whatever. Honestly, I feel kind of bad for Houston, since they'll probly lose Clemens as well, and already lost Jeff Kent and Wade Miller... well, eh. We shall see, I bet they can still pull out of it somehow, but it's unlikely they'll be a contender this year again.

We thought the thing with Tadahito Iguchi coming to the White Sox was a done deal but apparently they still have a bunch of things to work out. The interesting insight here is that Iguchi asked for his unconditional release, which means, I believe, that he can't return to the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks even if this doesn't work out. Now, the Hawks just bought Tony Batista and Jolbert Cabrera (the latter from the Mariners). I'm betting Cabrera is Iguchi's replacement, which is sort of amusing. Michael Westbay has some interesting insight on Batista and "power suketto" players here

Oh, and for more goofy Japanese baseball stuff, the2belo wasn't kidding, holy crap are those Rakuten Golden Eagles uniforms pretty funny-looking! I guess there's nothing much to do with the logo, and the colors aren't that awful, but the big round numbers and the flying E logo... heh.

The A's are signing Keiichi Yabu to pitch for them, apparently. He's a 36-year-old pitcher coming over, and some are comparing him to Masao Kida, which isn't really a reasonable comparison. Yabu is a workhorse, and a starter, and has always pitched a decent amount of innings, whereas Kida was a reliever (he never started a single game in his whole NPB career as far as I know). Putting Yabu in the A's starting rotation is not a bad move, and he comes cheap. We'll see how it works out, I guess.

Derek Lowe is apparently being offered a 4y/$36m contract by the Dodgers, tentative on the normal stuff plus them being able to offload Shawn Green. I simply don't get it; even *I* can tell you that's an overpriced contract. What this does mean though, with Millwood, Odalis Perez, Derek Lowe, Wade Miller, etc, off the market... it's looking like the pickings for getting free agent pitching is pretty slim. I'm not only thinking about this from the Mariners, but from the Texas Rangers, since I was really hoping they'd pick up a pitcher in the offseason. Ah well.

In the blogosphere or whatever, they did a pretty funny Mariners projection post over at Leone For Third, and Derek of USSM has another article in the PI, as well as a breakdown of all the Mariner player contracts. I'm wondering where clubs will measure up this year in terms of payroll; now that the Yankees have Randy Johnson they MUST be over $200m for the year, which is just obscene. (I've looked at past year opening day salaries and the gap just gets wider and wider...)

On a closing note: If the Mets go after Beltran, wasting even more of their payroll, maybe they can give back Mike Cameron to the Mariners :)