and Izturis + Aybar has been godly on defense. I’m convinced that half the reason Joe, Lackey, and Garland have the numbers they do is that our infield defense is the best in baseball. Moving Figgins over to short, where he hasn’t played in a while, and Holliday into third, where he hasn’t played in a while and was never that good to begin with, might very well be self-canceling. Our offensive increase in production would be entirely offset by the decrease in defensive prowess.

Agreed though, still not good in CO. His haircut would fit in fine though.

Meanwhile, we have Oakland and Texas who are building with, um… what again? Texas still has no pitching. Oakland has zero intimidating offensive prospects. What am I supposed to be afraid of, exactly?

Then we have “waited for prospects too long.” Like… who? D-Mac we didn’t “wait” on, so much as kept for ourselves. He turned into bust due to his injuries, but when healthy it always struck me as smart. Santana we held onto long enough for him to turn into an Ace pitcher. Same with Joe Saunders. Weaver’s still a decent starter, and he’s still young. We held on to Kotch and Kendrick long enough for them to become everyday guys.

I guess we’re left with Aybar and Mathis, though Aybar you could make the case for still having considerable trade value. Morales we’ve held onto a while, though that’s partially because there doesn’t seem to be a ton of interest in him. Anybody else?

As for Holliday giving us a better chance to win the world series, justify that one for me. If we lose Weaver, we’re almost taking an auto-loss every 5th game, with heavy strain on our relievers. Holliday would be making the NL-AL transition, and moving from a park that likes hitters to a park that doesn’t.

Giving Juan Rivera real playing time sacrifices nothing that the Holliday trade would cost us, but yields the same potential return.

Moving to the subject of titles though: how many mid-season trades did we make in 2002 again? Also, our record in ‘02 through 85 games: 50-35.

The best way to get titles is to make it to the postseason, each year, every year. There is no silver bullet, there are no guarantees when it comes to the playoffs. The best formula for making it every year is good pitching.

not actually one that we would offer before this deadline.
that’s what it would take to get the guy. obviously, until wee find another pitcher, it’s not going to happen.

the ‘massive increase in suck ‘part. We should get rid of VORP and have S-ORP. It would be so much better for the peesimistic among us (myself included) to quantify exactly how much Mosely’s suck over replacement player is!