The good things about the Milton Bradley signing include that they guy can hit and his contract. His career OPS+ is 118, but his last four years have all been above that. The last year his OPS+ was below 100 was 2002. That's a nice trend.

His contract, if broadcast reports are correct, is really only a two year deal at $10 million per year with a third year vesting on a minimum games played clause. So long as that number is higher than about 275 games, this is a good deal in today's market. There are still a lot of good players out there who are unsigned and the economy is down. High supply plus low demand should yield cheap contracts. In this case, it certainly appears that happened.

Milton's downside? The main one appears to be that he doesn't play very much. He has one 500 AB season in his career (516 in 2004) and only 2 seasons with over 400 ABs (414 in 2008). There's little reason to expect him to give the Cubs 1,000 ABs over the two guaranteed years of his contract.

Yeah, he's also on track to make Kent Mercker look calm and collected in his media relations and he makes Carlos Zambrano look like a Xanax pitchman. But that's Lou Piniella's problem. Thank god it's Lou and not the guy before him to have to manage this guy.