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TORONTO - The Toronto Blue Jays strengthened their starting rotation, signing righthander Miguel Batista to a three-year contract worth $13.1 million.

Batista will earn $3.6 million in 2004, $4.75 million in 2005 and $4.75 million in 2006.

Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi negotiated with Batista's agent Martin Arburua on Thursday and reached an agreement before leaving for the winter meetings in New Orleans.

"We didn't want to have to come down here and have this keep lingering and lingering and have other teams get more involved," Ricciardi said. "So we just wanted to put a deadline on it and tell him that we could come here and try to address that position or we could put it to bed."

Batista, 32, spent the last three seasons with the Arizona Diamondbacks and is best known for pitching 7 2/3 scoreless innings in Game Five of the 2001 World Series against the New York Yankees. He pitched a career-high 193 1/3 innings last season and went 10-9 with a 3.54 ERA in 36 games, including 29 starts.

"He'll be a good No. 2 (starter) for us," Ricciardi said. "He competes, number one, he takes the ball, he's going to give you 180-200 innings. ... We got a good player, we got him at a good price and I think everybody's happy."

Ricciardi already has made two other pitching moves in the offseason, acquiring lefthander Ted Lilly from the Oakland Athletics and signing free agent Pat Hentgen. Batista moves into the rotation along with Lilly and Hentgen behind ace Roy Halladay, the American League Cy Young Award winner.

Batista also pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates (1992), Florida Marlins (1996), Chicago Cubs (1997), Montreal Expos (1998-2000) and Kansas City Royals (2000) prior to joining the Diamondbacks in 2001 and has a career record of 42-50 with a 4.39 ERA.

This story is from ESPN.com's automated news wire. Wire index