Tom Glavine is ready for another try in Atlanta. Orlando Hudson is set to start over with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
A month shy of turning 43, Glavine completed a $1 million, one-year contract Friday to play again for the Braves.
Glavine leads active pitchers with 305 career victories. He’s eager to make up for last season in Atlanta, when elbow problems left him 2-4 with a 5.54 ERA in 13 starts.
“I had a sense of unfinished business,” he said. “I didn’t want my career to end the way it did last year.”
Hudson is a three-time Gold Glove winner and will take over at second base for the retired Jeff Kent.
The Dodgers gave the 31-year-old Hudson a one-year deal for $3.8 million. The contract was contingent on him passing a physical, a person familiar with the negotiations told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the team had not confirmed it.
Hudson had season-ending surgery on his left wrist each of the past two years with Arizona.
Once one of baseball’s aces, Glavine will be the fifth man in a five-man rotation.
nings and win every time he goes to the mound,” Glavine said. “I’m looking forward to this stage of my career where I don’t have to deal with that kind of pressure and can be more of a complement to our rotation.”
He will serve as Atlanta’s fifth starter behind Derek Lowe, Jair Jurrjens, Javier Vazquez and Kenshin Kawakami. Glavine will get some extra time to rehab his elbow and shoulder because the Braves won’t need a fifth starter until April 19.
“My only goal this year is to be healthy,” he said. “In my prime, that meant winning 20 games. Where I am now, maybe it’s winning 10 or 15. I don’t know what the number is. But if I stay healthy, go out there every five days, those numbers will take care of themselves and I’ll have a successful season.”
Omar Vizquel also is getting a new start. The 11-time Gold Glove shortstop signed a minor league deal with Texas and is going into his 21st season already knowing the Rangers’ plan – they want him to be a utility infielder and mentor to 20-year-old Elvis Andrus, also from Venezuela.
Vizquel missed the first full squad workout Thursday because he got mixed up about the reporting date. He met Andrus for the first time Friday and they sat together for a long time at their lockers.
ezuelan League, the kind of glove he uses, little things like that. I’m sure by the time spring training is done we’re going to be clicking pretty good.”
Andrus has never played above Double A. But the Rangers were so confident that he’ll stick that they moved five-time All-Star shortstop Michael Young, last year’s AL Gold Glove winner, to third base.
Andrus wasn’t even a year old when Vizquel, who turns 42 next month, made his major league debut in 1989. Vizquel’s 2,654 games at shortstop are a major league record.
After missing the start of last season with San Francisco because of left knee surgery, Vizquel was limited to 92 games and hit .222 with 23 RBIs.
A starting shortstop throughout his career, Vizquel will work this spring at second base and maybe third.
“It’s tough, winning as many Gold Glove as he’s won, as many spring trainings as he’s been to and went out as the everyday guy,” manager Ron Washington said. “Omar is a class act. We tried to explain to him exactly what we wanted out of him. He agreed. We’ll see how it goes.”
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