Steve Finley close to signing with the Angels
 

Steve Finley close to signing with the Angels for 2 years .. he will start in center

http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/ne..._mlb&fext=.jsp

other Angels news

Troy Glaus 3b signs with the Arizona for 4 years
http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/ne..._mlb&fext=.jsp

Yay, one more team out of the Beltran sweepstakes! :)

Yup, now the Cubs can sign him. :D

seems like a lot of money to pay a 39-year old guy who seems like a plausible candidate to have been helped a bit by the wonders of medicine...

Maybe his body was bombarded with gamma rays in a lab accident in 1996.

I have to admit I was hoping for Beltran, so signing Finley--a pretty good player himself--is still bittersweet news. I will feel better about this if we use the money we saved to go out and really improve the rotation. BTW, the news I am hearing is between 7-7.5 M per year, with an extra $5 M in incentives. So there is some age protection there if he doesn't come through (assuming the incentives aren't just weak ones for show).

There is one possible positive benefit for all of baseball in this. Apparently, Beltran had the Angels at the top of his list. I have been hearing this for some time, and Peter Gammons said on PTI that he was "shocked" the Angels signed Finley, because he (and much of baseball) really pretty much figured Beltran for Anaheim.

So Beltran has to cross the Angels off of the top of his list, which doubtless won't make him happy. And he would he then unload on? You guessed it, "super" agent Scott Boras, who has been playing his games trying to play one team off another. Nothing would help baseball better, IMO, than if thsi guy had troubles getting a good deal for Beltran and Beltre (whom is also being slow to sign).

CR

His clients are always slow to sign, though.

The key is whether or not Beltre and Beltran still get the 8 figures they're asking for, or if they have to settle for less.

I think Beltre probably will have to settle for a 2-3 year contract to prove he can keep doing what he did this year, and that his big payday will be in 2006-7.