Dear Drayton...

Dear Mr. McLane:

I noticed that you have re-signed third baseman Geoff Blum. According to the reports, you are giving him $1.5 million for this year, and that there is a mutual option for 2011 that would let him make $1.65 million.

Now seeing as how you like to waste millions of dollars on an essentially useless player -- this guy longs to be David Eckstein without having any of Eckstein's accomplishments, and anybody who ever read Fire Joe Morgan knows that Eckstein never actually had any accomplishments either -- instead of using the money for something more important, like maybe finding some way to give a free agent pitcher some more money, I'd like to make a suggestion.

Give that money to me. As you may know, I was laid off back in March, and since then, I've been bouncing around between temporary jobs. But seeing as how Blum only hit .247 and got only 49 RBI, I think it would just be better for you to give me, say, $500,000 for this year and $625,000 next year. That will save you two million dollars over the next two years, and since this money would allow me to pay off all of my debts while still leaving me with dollars to spare, I'll promise to buy two season tickets for the next two years. Not only that, I will promise to buy food and drinks from your concessions. And at the prices you charge, you'll recoup your investment in no time.

Thanks,

John Royal

P.S.: Oh, I also noticed that you have promised to review the team's many varied misteps -- like the Carlos Lee contract, and the Kaz Matsui contract, and trading for Miguel Tejada the day before the Mitchell Report, and the raping of the farm system, etc. And that's all good. But you should really have done this before you hired Brad Mills as your manager because the people who advised you on Mills are the same people who have advised you about Carlos Lee and Kaz Matsui and Miguel Tejada and the farm system.

You should have done the review first and fired the necessary people first. Then you should have made hiring the manager secondary to fixing the rest of your staff because Brad Mills isn't going to be able to do much if the people who thought Kaz Matsui was a must-sign are still running things.