Peter Gammons says one-year, $9 million with a $5M player option.

This is no good. Besides the fact that Adrian Beltre is good, the Red Sox now have three of the more underappreciated talents in the game playing daily. I can't hate Beltre, J.D. Drew, or Mike Cameron because so many already do for mostly foolish reasons.

Regardless, you have to be quite pessimistic to see this as anything but a win for Boston. Wins are going for about $3.5M per this off-season. That leaves Boston paying for about 2.5 wins. Beltre had a horrendous 2009 that involved bad luck with batted balls - in multiple ways - yet he was still worth 2.4 wins. As poor of a fit he was in Safeco, he's going to thrive in Fenway. Factor in good defense and really, this is about the worst case scenario.

This also means that Kevin Youkilis can stick at first base and Casey Kotchman can take his rightful place on the bench. All the smoke about Kotchman possessing moxie and belonging in the starting lineup was predictably smoke, used to force Scott Boras to the table. Boras may lose on the raw value of this deal and the player option seems like a nice touch on his part, albeit hardly a gamble on Theo Epstein's.

Making the playoffs just became a little harder.