Splash size pre-rankings...

As many of you may be aware, Munchausen and I both have filed a fiscal protest on the M's. That means that we are not willing to spend money on the M's (tickets, parking, concessions, etc...) until Howard Lincoln, and the rest of the front office, make decisions that dramatically improve this team. It's pretty much consensus that the M's need to make a big splash this offseason to get things back on track.

My curiosity, though, is -- what would that big splash be? I mean, really, they've got a lot of holes to fill, and it's certainly subject to debate whether the M's should make one HUGE splash and a few olympic-gold-medalist-divers'-sized splashes to fill in the other holes, or if they should make several moderate-sized splashes that would be large, but not completely as huge as, say, signing Beltran. I'm really okay with either, provided they interpret those splashes the same way I do. Although I do believe the M's have the bones to make several Beltran-sized splashes, I'm realistic enough to believe that they don't have the cojones and it's not likely that they will.

But, I'm only one voice in the blogosphere. I'm curious as to the different levels of splashes that the M's can make, and who you'd place in those levels. To start the discussion, I really have only one HUGE splash in mind. That's Beltran. Period. He's the hands down Holy Grail of this free agent market, pretty much consensus around the baseball world. I've heard some people question this, but it seems to be the case that he's the biggest prize of this offseason.

To use a ratings scale of "-1" to "3", "3" being a gray whale-sized tail fin splash, "2" being more of a walrus-sized splash, "1" being a penguin-sized splash, and "-1" being a total belly flop, what are people's splash rankings on the free agent list (let's use MLB's free agent list because it's nicely sortable).

Obviously, Beltran is a 3. If you want to debate this, that's fine, too. Are there any other 3's out there? Is Beltre a 3? Lots of people say, yes, and I'm leaning more that direction.

If there's one and only one move that they made this offseason that can and would silence my cynicism, it would, of course, to be to sign Carlos Beltran. If they made that signing alone, and band-aided the rest of the team for a run in 2006, I'd be just fine with that. I can't speak for Munchausen, but that one signing would get me buying tickets again.