Arbitration dates are coming up for Tim Redding, Pete Munro, and Roy Oswalt. I recommend we sign all three, Oswalt in particular, and hopefully to a multi-year deal, for a few reasons:

1. It's likely to be less expensive to sign him to a 4 year deal now than arbitration this year and a 3 year deal next year. (7+3/36 or 4/40, for example).

2. Lance Berkman was on a sports show on 610 radio the other day and he essentially said he expects Beltran-type money. I just don't think we're going to re-sign Lance; I think he's probably going to at least want to test the FA market. If we can sign Roy O now, at least we'd have a reference point to dealing with Berkman and it would show him we're serious about fielding a semi-competitive team over the next few years instead of giving up and rebuilding.

I've said this before, but several of Oswalt's most comparable pitchers (baseball-reference.com again, if you're curious) are Mike Mussina and David Cone, who remained productive into their mid 30's. Some of Berkman's comps did not (Albert Belle, Tim Salmon).