Thanks to the holidays (and my own basic laziness), I neglected to post the weekly summary of transactions this past Sunday. Fortunately, RHM already gave you the big stories, and it wasn’t as busy as the previous week, so we’ll just catch up on things today. It’ll make next Sunday’s summary that much easier to do. So without further ado, the NLC player transactions from 12/17 thru 12/25/07:

On Monday 12/17, the Astros signed RHP Jack Cassel to a $400,000, one-year contract.

On Tuesday 12/18:

• The Cardinals jumped into the market for former Reds players, signing free agent IF D’Angelo Jimenez to a minor league contract with an invitation to spring training.
• The Astros signed RHP Chad Paronto to a one-year, $500,000 contract.
• The Pirates re-signed free agent RHP Masumi Kuwata to a minor league contract with an invitation to spring training.

On Wednesday 12/19, the Cubs signed OF Kosuke Fukudome to a four-year, $48 million contract, as previously reported by RHM. Fukudome has no page on Baseball-Reference.com yet, so I’ve linked to his page on The Baseball Cube instead. To me, that just seems like a lot of money for a guy who’s 29 and has never seen a major league pitch. In fact, for that money he better be good, because if not, the Bleacher Bums at Wrigley are going to have a field day with that surname of his.

On Thursday 12/20, the Brewers coaxed OF Gabe Kapler out of retirement with a one-year, $800,000 contract. The eight-year veteran spent last year managing the Red Sox’ Class-A Greenville farm team in the South Atlantic League, A.K.A. the Sally League. Greenville went 58-81, finishing 14th in a 16-team league, but I’m sure that had nothing at all to do with Kapler’s decision to give up managing and become a baseball player.

On Friday 12/21, the Pirates signed C Michel Hernandez, C (and ex-Red) Miguel Perez, RHP Mike Thompson and INF Jorge Velandia to minor league contracts with invitations to spring training. And of course, there was that trade involving the Reds and Rangers, on which RHM has given us the details in another thread.

That’s been it in the NLC, unless you are a Cardinals fan and are stockpiling ammunition with which to villify and condemn John Mozeliak, in which case you need to know that the Phillies snapped up OF So Taguchi two days before Christmas with a one-year, $1.05 million contract. Is it my imagination, or does it look like the Cardinals are trying to meet the Pirates in the basement?

JK