Beerleaguer has the details, and I concur with his assessment of the deal. This is the best 1-2 catching situation the Phils have had in some time.

Schneider had a subpar 2009 while playing for the Mets, but who didn’t shit the bed in Flushing last year? He hit all three of his home runs at home, but hit for better average on the road over a larger sample size of plate appearances.

Schneider gives the Phils a competent backup to Chooch who can also put one in the seats once in a while. Of course, he’s a left-handed hitter.

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The Phils third base situation is still up in the air, and recent reports said that Pedro Feliz would prefer to sign elsewhere if he has the opportunity. I suspect that the Phils feel the same – given the choice, they want to move on. If they had to bring Feliz back, they would. But when Ruben sits on Santa’s lap sometime in the next 10 days or so, Pete’s name is unlikely to come up.

I would be fine with the Phils trading for Mike Lowell provided what we give up is minimal at best beyond helping the Red Sox devour a portion of that $12 million contract for 2010. None of the 3rd base options seem all that great. I’d love to see Mark DeRosa in red pinstripes, but not at the hot corner for 110 games.

Chone Figgins? Adrian Beltre? Don’t both of those players seem like tremendous longshots at this point? I think so.

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Even though the coverage was still small compared to big signings, I will still a little surprised by the amount of discussion surrounding the Mets signing Chris Coste. I get the angles of the story, but I guess I really don’t give much of a shit about it. It won’t be remotely “weird” to see Chris Coste in a Mets uniform, if he even makes the team.

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Todd Zolecki has some thoughts from Ruben Amaro Jr. as we get into the arbitration offering period. As many others have opined elsewhere, I don’t get the idea of not offering Chan Ho Park arbitration. If he definitely wants to start, he may get an opportunity elsewhere even if it is for less than he may have gotten in arbitration with the Phils to come back as a reliever. I don’t get the sense that Park is motivated by money so much as he is his status as a starter. Amaro must have really been worried about how much Park could have gotten if they’d gone to the table.

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If you’ve never sauntered your way over, check out Cot’s Baseball Contracts, an indispensable resource on who makes how much, when their contract is up, and more.

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Roy Halladay just made the Blue Jays job of getting maximum return on trading him that much tougher by placing an ultimatum on when he would stop approving trades. If Halladay is in a Blue Jays uniform for spring training, then he will be a Blue Jay for all of 2010, and the Jays will only get draft pick compensation in return for him going elsewhere as a free agent in 2011.

The Jays HAVE to trade him within the next 60 days or so. And they deserve whatever manner tin which they get screwed on this. They screwed this up last year at the deadline by setting way too high a price, and now Halladay is taking advantage of his no-trade clause by preventing the front office from dangling him out there until the trade deadline and turning the clubhouse onto a soap opera set.

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“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”
- Rogers Hornsby