Gregg, Torrealba

The past couple of days or so has seen speculation turn to near-reality as Kevin Gregg is reportedly about to sign a deal with the Blue Jays.  Gregg, who has saved at least 23 games each of the past three years, is not being brought in to become the closer here as much as he would compete with Jason Frasor and Scott Downs for the role, a battle that may extend deep into the regular season.

So, if Gregg signs with Toronto, we'll likely be forecasting him, Frasor and Downs to get a similar number of saves, about a third of a non-contending team's saves here as there's no true standout in this equation though Gregg's experience may give him the slightest edge.  Gregg is a better pitcher than he appeared to be last year, when he suffered through a fairly unlucky season with the Cubs that was inconsistent with his recent career, this as he hasn't yet celebrated his thirty-second birthday.

One other signing that looked likely this week was Yorvit Torrealba being ready to sign with San Diego.  He's not being brought in to take over from Nick Hundley and like Hundley, we're not projecting much offensively, especially in this hitting environment.  In fact, our previously published forecast for Hundley already reflected the belief that someone else would be brought in to join Hundley behind the plate, even though we didn't know whom.

We already were fairly down on Torrealba's chances to hit much this year and in San Diego, not unlike what we're saying about Hundley, we're going to be forecasting a very low average (think .230-ish) with maybe 4 or 5 home runs and around 25 RBI over, say, 250 at bats.  In other words, we're about to forecast last year's .291 average in Colorado as a complete overachievement, this from a thirty-one year old catcher with a career .255 average who hit .246 in hitting-friendly Colorado as recently as 2008.