The non-tender deadline

The deadline to offer contracts to arbitration eligible players is tonight at midnight, which means the Bucs have to come to a decision on Oliver Perez, Kip Wells, Josh Fogg, Ryan Vogelsong, Craig Wilson, Humberto Cota, and Jody Gerut. Littlefield has said repeatedly he will offer a contract to all of them, though he said that earlier in the fall, then proceeded cut Ty Wigginton. Charlie has a good post up on this right now and I agree with almost all of it so I'll only give a quick version of my thoughts.
  • Ollie, Kip, Craig, and Gerut should all get offers. Ollie is obvious (DL is going to Mexico to check on his progess, which has been very good to this point), Tracy and his staff like Kip and want a chance to fix him, which I think we should give them, Craig is valuable either in a right field platoon (as I've suggested) or to back-up Casey at first (great post by Rowdy yesterday on Casey's health) and Gerut will be cheap due to his very injured past and as I've suggested, if he's healthy he could be an asset.
  • Josh Fogg is probably a mistake. It pains me to say it, but the guy has been bad the last couple years and won't be worth the $2 million or so he'll be making. Unless you have a trade lined up for him, don't make him an offer. We have lots of pitching and we just don't need Josh Fogg, plain and simple.
  • Cota and Vogelsong and borderline. Both will be fairly cheap, but have their drawbacks. Cota is a question mark because of Paulino and Doumit and Vogelsong is a question mark because of his history of sucking. I like Vogelsong and I think he's capable of more than he's shown us to this point in his career, plus he had a pretty decent second half of '05 and he can't be worse than Meadows was last year, so I'd say it would be a mistake not to tender him (as the PG article suggests we might). Cota, on the other hand, was awful at the plate (I know he seemed clutch, but clutch hits must have made up all of his hits, look at his numbers last year) and another year at AAA won't do Paulino any good. I'm with Charlie on this one, we need a backup for Paulino and Doumit, but we don't need three catchers and there is a reason minor league contracts exist (so you don't trade Leo Nunez for Benito Santiago, listening, Dave?).

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