At this hour is appears pretty likely Colorado OF Matt Holliday has been traded to Oakland in exchange for as-yet-unnamed humans. While Phillip Michaels “looks forward to seeing which prospects he’s eventually flipped for”, Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal insists the A’s plan to keep Holliday, who is scheduled to earn $13.5 million in 2009.
The Athletics are in position to increase payroll to as much as $80 million, and plans to contend next season.To that end, the A’s also are targeting free-agent shortstop Rafael Furcal to be their leadoff man. Furcal is drawing interest from about 10 clubs, according to his agent, Paul Kinzer. The acquisition of Holliday could help persuade Furcal that the A’s are serious about competing.
If the Rockies obtained lefthander Greg Smith from Oakland, they almost certainly would insert him into their starting rotation. The addition of Huston Street would represent a buffer against the pending loss of free-agent closer Brian Fuentes.
From a Flushing-centric perspective, I’m glad to see neither Philly nor St. Louis could seal the deal for Holliday, but equally troubled at the hint of Houston Street — a more attractive closer proposition from this vantage point than Chad Cordero or Derek Turnb(l)ow — ending up with a National League club besides the Mets.
Huston Street is not a good closer, even when he’s healthy. The Rockies fucked up. I hope the settings on that humidor go up to eleven, if you know what I mean.
The New York Mess are destined to overspend for the much more overrated K-Fraud in case you don’t know Minaya’s m.o. by now. The Angels have a cheap in-house alternative in Jose Arredondo which is becoming a trend on good teams (see: Papelbon, Jonathan). If Minaya had more prospects he could fuck up even huger by trading his best talent for George Sherrill but, hey, you can’t have everything. Mess fans should hope that one day the team’s philosophy shifts to hiring the right people in order to have better drafts.
I hate to say it but the Mess are becoming the Junior Bombers and they can’t even compete in the Contrived Local TV Car Ad category. Exhibits A and B.