Mariners Get Cheap Putz

Yesterday, the Mariners signed closer J.J. Putz to a three-year contract with a team option for the fourth year. The contract's worth $13.1 million, and includes a $1.5 million signing bonus. We've got a feeling J.J. will just be randomly checking his balance at pretty much every ATM in the city the next couple of days.

"Putz," in Yiddish, means "penis," something we learned when living in New York. Senator Al D'Amato called his 1998 Democratic opponent for re-election, Chuck Schumer, a "putz-head". Schumer cagily claimed anti-Semitism and D'Amato lost the race. He now works, we believe, as an elevator inspector. Call it Macaca-lite.

But we digress. Putz, who wisely pronounces his name as if it rhymes with "boots," gets $2.2 million this year, $3.4 million in 2008, and $5 million in 2009. Seems a little low to us, considering that the M's paid the clearly inferior Eddie Guardado $6 million in 2005 and $6.2 million last year.

Top M's blogs USS Mariner and Lookout Landing, usually first on the spot with Mariner news, haven't weighed in as of 8:44 this morning--maybe they're stunned into catatonia by an unexpectedly intelligent move by the M's.

UPDATE: USS Mariner has a luke-warm endorsement of the signing.