Last night, several people on twitter confirmed that the Red Sox and Aaron Cook

Aaron Cook, looking to make a comeback (Denver Post photo)

reached a deal for a minor league contract. Cook, coming off a terrible season with Colorado, was hoping the team would pick up his $11 million option. After the Rockies, smartly, declined that option he seems to have settled for a small one year deal to try to up his value again.

Cook had about as bad a year as you could imagine the 33-year-old sinker-ball pitcher to have last year. 3-10 with an ERA north of 6 while only being able to manage 4.5 SO/9 is really not what I had in mind when I wrote about looking for a 4th or 5th starter last night. I understand the attraction to having a sinker ball pitcher at Fenway, but give me Saunders, Kuroda, or Maholm any day of the week.

Carlos Silva should offer a boost to Ft. Myers restaurants (AP photo/Morry Gash)

I get the fact that competition for a pitching spot in spring is a good thing, I like seeing it too, but right now the Red Sox have signed guys up that I just hope never make it out. I can’t see rooting for Carlos Silva or Aaron Cook to be a healthy life choice for me. Oh well, still more time to find that perfect guy to shore up the back-end, right?

Bigger issue for me on these deals is that while I did not want to believe it, it seems more and more likely that Cherington will have minimum control over this team as GM. It is too bad, from what I know about Ben, he is a smart baseball guy and he deserves to get his chance after being in shadow of Theo, serving him well surely. I sometimes wonder if Lucchino would not make himself GM just so he has someone elses name to attached to the bad deals he makes?