Coffey signs with Dodgers

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Todd Coffey posted a 3.62 ERA in 69 games with the Nationals last season.

"Coffey Time" is heading out to La-La Land. Which means it may need to be re-branded "Soy Latte Time."

Todd Coffey, who amused Nationals fans with his bullpen-to-mound sprint last season, has signed a one-year contract with the Dodgers that guarantees him at least $1.3 million.

The right-hander will earn $1 million this year, with a club option for 2013 worth $2.5 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. If the Dodgers decline the option, they'll pay a $300,000 buyout.

Coffey, 31, went 5-1 with a 3.62 ERA in 69 appearances and proved an effective middle reliever during his one season in Washington. The Nationals had some mild interest in bringing him back, but once they inked veteran Brad Lidge to a one-year, $1 million contract last week, they no longer had an open bullpen slot.

The husky reliever owns a 4.08 ERA in 438 career appearances with the Reds, Brewers and Nationals.

Payroll could reach $84 million

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Edwin Jackson will earn $9 million this year, with another $2 million paid in 2013.

Somewhat lost amid the news of Edwin Jackson's signing and the domino effect it's going to have on the Nationals rotation is the financial impact of all this.

Even on a one-year rental, Jackson doesn't come cheap. The Nationals are committed to paying him $11 million for his services, though a source familiar with the contract said only $9 million of that will be paid this year, with another $2 million deferred to 2013.

Still, that's a good amount of money the Lerner family just doled out. It's actually the highest one-year salary the Nationals have ever paid to a pitcher.

And this unexpected February signing is going to bump the franchise's payroll to a level it's never seen before, perhaps reaching as high as $84 million come Opening Day. That would represent a 22 percent

Sorting out a suddenly overflow rotation

Trivia time: Can you name the five pitchers who made the most starts for the Nationals in 2010?

If you said Livan Hernandez (33), John Lannan (25), Craig Stammen (19), Luis Atilano (16) and Scott Olsen (15), congratulations. You remember the painful history of this franchise far too well.

Was it really less than two years ago the Nationals trotted out that less-than-inspiring rotation? Have they really managed in such short time to go from that to this: Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmermann, Gio Gonzalez, Edwin Jackson and either Chien-Ming Wang, John Lannan or Ross Detwiler?

Any one of the three guys now battling for the final spot in the 2012 rotation would probably have been good enough to start Opening Day in

Transcript of Rizzo's conference call

General manager Mike Rizzo held a conference call this afternoon to discuss the Nationals' acquisition of Edwin Jackson and what it means for the rest of his pitching staff.

Here's a full transcript from that conference call with reporters...

Q: Edwin Jackson is a guy you've been after for quite some time, as far back as 2010. What do you like about him and what impresses you the most about him?
RIZZO: I wouldn't describe it as we've been after him since 2010. We saw an opportunity here to acquire a young, hard-throwing, power-pitching, innings-eating type of starting pitcher and we thought it was a good value at a good term. You can never have enough good, quality starting pitching, and we felt it was a good enough value to make him a National.

Q: With all of the starting pitching you have, does this help you try to acquire a bat?
RIZZO: I think they're mutually exclusive. We made this decision to

Nats agree to deal with Jackson (updated)

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Edwin Jackson went 12-9 with a 3.79 ERA in 32 games last season.

Updated at 5:18 p.m.

The Nationals already had a five-man starting rotation. Actually, they had a seven-man rotation before adding Edwin Jackson to the puzzle today.

So why give Jackson a one-year, $10 million contract and create an even bigger pitching logjam?

"We saw an opportunity here to acquire a young, hard-throwing, power-pitching, innings-eating-type of starting pitcher, and we thought it was a good value at a good term," general manager Mike Rizzo said in announcing the deal. "You can never have enough good, quality starting pitching, and we felt it was a good enough value to make him a National."

Expected to command a much-larger deal when the offseason began -- perhaps getting as many as five guaranteed years -- Jackson instead saw his price come down, especially over the last two weeks when he