Attanassio Lowers Expectations

Owner Mark Attanassio sounds like a guy who is a bit snakebit:

"One of the challenges I have is buying into a falling market. When you buy into a rising market, you can't move fast enough. The challenge here is that, look, any investment you made in 2008 on Wall Street, 12 months ago, 12 weeks ago, 12 days ago, even 12 hours ago, you are down. We have to be careful with what is going on here."

If he is anything like me (on an exponentially grander scale) Attanassio has gotten a bit of a rude awakening over the last twelve months and will hesitate to spend money on just about anything, it's human nature. Sadly, it seems this is carrying over to his baseball club:

Attanasio knows that Melvin has proven adept in previous seasons at signing players late in the winter. "We think we will see some bargains at the last minute," Attanasio said. "We'll keep our powder dry a little bit."

I'm not seeing many bargains. While contracts on the whole have not increased at a rate commensurate to previous years, there aren't a lot of cheap players on the market that can help this team. I think Randy Johnson will be forced to lower his expectations a bit, but giving $10 million to an ancient (and still effective) pitcher for 2-3 years is by no means a "bargain."