Misdeals

We had a couple of trades today between teams in the middle and teams near the bottom. The teams in the middle (Bats and Hobo) are getting nervous about finishing 7th, and have moved the chips they feel they can afford.

First, the Falkuhns sent Javier Vazquez, Jon Lieber and Mike Lowell to Bats for Marcus Giles, Ryan Madson and Ryan Wagner. Barry is finally going after the pitching he so desperately needs, giving up a couple of theoretical future pitchers and one nice player with a little of everything in Giles. For that he gets the inconsistent Javy Vazquez with 9 wins and a fine WHIP but with that 4.37 ERA that just doesn’t get any better. He also gets Jon Lieber, also with 9 wins and somewhat uglier numbers. Finally, he takes on the red hot (according to Larry Dot Net) Mike Lowell, who he can afford to bury on his roster with all that moster hitting he’s got. Barry loses a point in steals and probably nothing else in hitting. He’ll pick up 4-7 points in wins, a push in ERA and maybe picks up a couple of points in WHIP, though that’s a pretty tight category. Figure this deal moves Barry up to 65 points. Not bad for him.

The Falkuhns get a reasonably priced Giles for one year, and have options on Madson (doesn’t look like he’s a closer, though Billy Wagner is quite likely gone from Phily next year, so who knows?) and the other Wagner, who is on the DL, has terrible numbers, and has disappointed virtually everyone expecting him to be the closer when Graves was canned. Giles is the only sure keeper (hey, he’s on contract, so it’s required), but he really didn’t give up that much, though Vazquez looks awfully good sometimes. So does Noah Lowry.

The other trade saw the Old Rips send Glaus, Kearns, Tejeda and Ardoin to Hobo for Utley, Relaford, an injured Heath Bell and Ausmus/Molina. For the Hobo, Glaus is the key, plus Kearns who hit well this past week. Tejeda is still a huge risk, though he’s been better than decent. Of course, they gave up the best player in the deal, Utley, a solid keeper at $13 (we should have said $14 – we had the money). It looks like an increase in homers and RBI’s (1 point each), a wash or drop in BA (say nil), and a drop in steals (1 point). Let’s guess a 2 point increase in wins, though that is speculative, and giving the benefit of the doubt, no change in the other pitching categories. Net increase for Hobo: 3 points, to say 62. That’s what they gave up for Utley, who they had been trying to trade for Andruw Jones. Hey, I could be wrong, but they had to try. This is probably where Hobo will quit for this year, as they want to keep a few chips for next season.

Meanwhile Mark got another solid keeper. I’m looking forward to seeing how he gets something for Hee Hee Hee Sop Choi. And it looks like Larry Dot Net lost a potential trading partner, leaving us and the Cappers as the most likely teams to work on that Andruw trade.

Something new for us this week: we actually won a waiver claim. Everyone must have been scared off of Geoff Blum when the Padres picked up Joe Randa and didn’t get rid of Phil Nevin. What we can say about Blum is (1) he doesn’t suck, (2) he’s certainly better than Chen and (3) he qualifies everywhere in the infield, allowing us to move Luis Gonzalez to Utility. We now have a lot of flexibility for whatever deal we will make. Furthermore, we’ve always liked the guy, even if he isn’t Jewish. He now joins David Eckstein as semi-goyim on our team.