If the bad weather and the Packers having you feeling down today, maybe this will cheer you up — LaVelle E. Neal III of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune doesn’t think the Twins will have to match the best offer made to Carl Pavano in order to keep him.
As Tom Haudricourt has mentioned, the Brewers don’t intend on going more than two years on any offer to Pavano. Considering Pavano’s name is starting to come up as a Plan B for the Rangers if they don’t re-sign Cliff Lee, it’s probably safe to assume that the Brewers’ offer won’t be the best one he gets.
With that said, if the reports of the Rangers being interested are accurate, then we probably shouldn’t expect any Pavano news until after Lee signs. If Lee goes to the Yankees and the Rangers get in on Pavano, odds are he’ll quickly end up outside of the Brewers’ price range, anyway. If Lee returns to Texas, it probably doesn’t have much of an effect on the Pavano market — the Yankees would probably be more likely to sell what’s left of their farm to get Zach Greinke before they even think about bringing Pavano back.
I’m not entirely sure the Brewers need Pavano to field a strong starting rotation, anyway. At this point, the bottom of their rotation doesn’t look much worse than that of Cincinnati or St. Louis, and with the addition of Shaun Marcum, the top of their rotation looks to be a bit better than Cincinnati’s. They have the rotation to contend for what should be a wide-open division. The addition of someone like Pavano would bump Chris Narveson down to #5 and provide one of the most complete rotations in the division, but the cost would probably outweigh the benefits.
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