Thoughts on the Herrera signing

There is lots of speculating what the Yuslan Herrara signing means for the rest of the off-season going on, which is natural. It may well mean that DL is planning on trading off one of our other four starters for a big bat, then signing a pitcher to fill the resulting spot in the rotation. It does almost certainly mean that we can kiss Shawn Chacon goodbye (though we already knew that). Still, it's hard to say what DL is planning without knowing what they're going to be paying Herrara. Since he was a fairly highly regarded Cuban defector, I'd imagine that he's not going to be as cheap as we might think. This move may well take the place of signing a free agent off of the typical market, say John Thomson or Jason Marquis (two players from the list of guys who have filed that seem like probable and affordable targets for the Pirates; they also might do something like go out and overpay for Weaver, but I thinking (hoping?) he pitched himself out of our price range in the playoffs). Since we all know next to nothing about Herrera, it's too soon to say if that's good or not. And yeah, everyone is still waiting for an official announcement for the team to confirm that they've signed the guy.