As was reported widely last week but as was not relayed on this blog, the A's have signed left-handed starter Rich Hill to a one-year contract. Hill is 36 and had a nice run as a starter from 2006 to 2008 for the Cubs before injuries began to take their toll. He then dazzled in 20 bullpen innings for the Red Sox in 2012, had a weird year with Cleveland in 2013 (12 K/9 but seven BB/9 as a LOOGY: 63 games, but just 39 innings), spent most of 2014 in the minors, and then had four excellent starts back with Boston last year. In those four starts, he was a fastball-curve pitcher without a ton of velocity (90-91 mph average), but the curve was one of the biggest in the game, ranking 27th in vertical movement out of 207 pitchers who threw at least 100 curves last year. Despite that, it did not generate a notable percentage of swings or whiffs, though it did induce grounders 64 percent of the time it was put in play, which ranked 37th in that same population.

Nobody should look at Hill and be excited that Davilly Forbeane found a no. 2 starter to replace Scott Kazmir, but for $6 million, at the cost of wins on the open market these days, if Hill manages 180 innings as a no. 3/4, he'll have been worth the bucks.

The signing cost the A's A.J. Griffin, in terms of 40-man moves, as Griffin was designated for assignment. You know his injury saga, and you are hopefully aware that even in 2013, he had a 101 ERA+, decent walk and strikeout numbers being offset by a league-leading homers total despite pitching half his games in Oakland. On a good team, that's a no. 4 starter. Getting that for cheap is pretty good. Getting that for an arbitration salary, even one depressed by two years of not pitching, is less good. The DFA presumably signals that the A's are going to nontender him anyway, and it seems entirely plausible to me that nobody will claim Griffin on waivers and the A's can keep him on a minor-league contract. It also seems plausible that someone is willing to pay what little he'll get in arbitration (Matt Swartz's model projects the league minimum) to take a chance on a solid starter.

The other two moves were Rule 5–related, as the A's added Joey Wendle and Jose Torres to the 40-man at the cost of Fernando Abad and Craig Gentry. The latter two were terrible last year and are in their arbitration years. Wendle, notwithstanding Jane Lee's pronouncement that he was "terrific" last season for Nashville, is a decent prospect at best, but also someone who's probably a finished product and has starter upside at second base. Not good starter, but starter. There are 30 of them, after all.

Jose Torres is a little less familiar. He didn't make my Consensus Top Prospects list last year, which doesn't mean that I had an opinion on him but does mean that not a single prospects list (MLB.com, Sickels, FanGraphs, BP, BA) named him. He's 22 and spent most of the season in Low-A Beloit as a reliever striking out nearly 10 men per nine innings, which I suppose is enough for the A's to fear that someone could grab him and make him their seventh bullpen man. This is perhaps justifiable given that he is a lefty who throws hard.