Blind as a Bat

I just had my eyes dilated, and can barely see a thing. So if there are typos in this mess, just forgive and forget.

There were two big trades today, and we were party to one. After negotiating for a couple of weeks with Greg Doyle, we sent Milton Bradley and Jayson Werth to the Cartel for Miguel Cabrera and Sean Casey. Having moved to 11th place in batting average, we are desperate for a couple of 300 hitters. We figure we’ll pick up a few RBI’s (we need them), lose a few homers, and lose 1 stolen base point to the Cartel. Werth is a great keeper at a buck, and Bradley at $23 is excellent too, though we got back Cabrera who is under contract for another year at $15.

We found it difficult to move either guy. We don’t understand it. Part of the problem is that Mark was fixated on getting Lidge (see below) from the Busch Leaguers, and so he wouldn’t talk to us. Kevin is taking his time, Doug and Frank are not active dumpers and Larry is impossible to deal with. The final straw is that it was reported today that Bradley is still not ready to come back, and had a setback this week. We’ve wasted a month waiting for the guy, who was in a perpetual state of “back at the end of the week”, so we left him in a semi-frozen state. Werth finally awoke this week, with 4 homers, but he’s not a high average guy, and may lose some playing time when Bradley comes back.

There is one more thing about Bradley: he’s only signed through this year. He’ll probably be resigned by the Dodgers, and the odds are he’ll stay in the NL, but it was a consideration. Plus, we suspect Cabrera is pretty tradeable besides being pretty keepable. Of course we’re hoping that Casey will start hitting a few dingers, but if he just keeps hitting 320 with some RBI’s in that #3 spot in the order, we’ll be satisfied.

We were, in theory, talking with the Falkuhns. It was strictly theory. Larry keeps advertising for people to deal with him, but I’ve been logged into Larry Dot Net for a month and we never got close to a deal. He said he was interested in Bradley, but I could not pin him down, not even close. I think he just said it. Meanwhile, I left him 2 phone messages this past week without hearing back. I always thought he was stringing me along to get a better deal from Hobo. There is a rumor that Hank set 11am today as the final deadline for any deal with the Falkuhns. I doubt that, but I understand the feeling. Who know, maybe Larry would be interested in Cabrera?

Meanwhile, the Rips pulled off an egregious dump deal. I hate it. It has such a big effect on the race, making the Leaguers pretty tough competition. I just spoke with Ken, though, and he thought Mark made a great deal, getting the single best keeper in the league (Lidge) and weakening the Leaguers for the future. He also questions whether Maddux and Lowe will help or hurt the Leaguers’ pitching stats. He gave up nothing in saves (Jones is doing well), got Abreu, and is hoping his pitching will improve overall. I guess we’ll see, but that’s a tough looking team.

As for the Pecklers, we actually made another major move today by dumping all of our Giant starting pitching. Lowry and Tomko are gone, waived for two middle relievers (Carrasco and Witasick) who won’t kill us. We could really use Hampton back (he’s going to be out for a while longer, but at $3 maybe someone would trade us a useful starter for him?), because we only have 3 starters left – Pedro, Webb and Suppan. For the moment.

Anyway, it’s a hell of a race we’ve got. Hey, we’re trying.