Dodgers decline $12 million option on closer Gagne Associated Press
LOS ANGELES -- Eric Gagne's $12 million option was declined Friday by the Los Angeles Dodgers, making the former NL Cy Young Award winner a free agent.
The Dodgers will pay $1 million to buy out the final year of Gagne's contract, but could attempt to re-sign him at a lower guaranteed salary. Gagne had filed provisionally for free agency on Tuesday.
Gagne had season-ending surgery July 8 to repair a herniated disc in his lower back. He is expected to be healthy and ready to pitch when spring training begins in mid-February.
Gagne was limited to 14 games and eight saves in 2005 and two outings with one save this year. He had surgery in April to remove a nerve from his pitching elbow -- the same arm that required elbow-ligament replacement surgery in 1997.
Gagne became a closer in 2002 and was an immediate success, saving 52 games that year, a franchise-record 55 in 2003 and 45 in 2004. He set a major league record with 84 consecutive saves from late 2002 to mid-2004.
He won the NL Cy Young Award in 2003, when he went 2-3 with a 1.20 ERA and 55 saves, two shy of the record Bobby Thigpen set with the Chicago White Sox in 1990.
Want to piss off the Red Sox, and find a better set-up man than Kyle Farnsworth?
Sign Eric Gagne. Yes, I realize he's the Mark Prior/Kerry Wood version of a closer because of his injuries, but let's see if they couldn't haggle a deal that is incentive-laden and based upon games played in...the Red Sox desperately need a closer after letting Foulke go and moving Papelbon to the starting rotation, and signing Gagne with the Yankees takes away the only decent closer on the market for the Red Sox, hurting their bullpen, while providing a solid set-up man (ala Tom Gordon) for Mariano Rivera.
