More photos » Nam Y Huh - AP

Kerry Wood reflects on why he can't throw his slider for a strike and why hitters can send his fastball over the fences with regularity.

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Long time, readers. Soon I'll have a full update, but I'd like to toot my own horn a bit about Kerry Wood. You see, I wrote a much-lambasted article that essentially said that Kerry Wood was the following:

• A significant injury risk
• A relief pitcher coming off a "career" year (as a reliever, anyway)
• Not worth $10M/year for 2 years
• Not worth signing compared to Rafael Furcal (and in hindsight, Orlando Hudson)
  

Let's take a look at their stats, shall we?

And for fun, their WARs:

• Kerry Wood: -0.1
  
• Orlando Hudson: +2.1
  
• Rafael Furcal: +0.7
  

Eric Seidman said this about the deal:

My evaluation yesterday suggested Kerry Wood is a +1.4 win player for 2009, factoring in his run prevention skills as well as the leverage of the innings he will pitch in a new, and offensively superior, league. This would place his fair market value in the vicinity of $6-8 mil. A 2-yr deal in this regard should have been worth $14 mil. It is now being reported that his deal with the Indians is closer to 2-yr/$20 mil, meaning the Indians will be paying him over $7 mil/win relative to the average annual value. Wood will provide stability at the position given the revolving closers door for the Indians this past season, but he will have to vastly outdo his projection to merit being paid that much per win. Not even the overvalued K-Rod is receiving that much per win with his new deal.

Sounds about right.

If what we wanted was a guy who can throw in the mid-high 90's without the ability to locate his secondary pitch, I'm pretty sure David Aardsma was available for nothing.