General Sports Water Cooler

I just don't see how this team goes from winning 70 games to winning 90 or more in this division. If someone can tell me another way they get there, I'd love to hear it. I'm dying for this team to win again and pack the yard.

If we followed charmcity's plan there's a very good chance we could be staring at the same situation 5 years down the road.

It's nice that we want more than that package from the Marlins but the reality could be that's the best we could do. Jim Callis threw out maybe Jurrjens and Arodys Vizcaino but he said Atlanta probably wouldn't do that.

Markakis won't bring back much, we got Reynolds for two bullpen arms and he hasn't significantly improved his value between last year and this year. Guthrie isn't going to bring back much. Really the only guy that would bring back potential stars would be Wieters and you'd be trading 4 years of Wieters for 4-5 guys with only one or two having a star level ceiling.

We have a pretty solid core locked up for relatively low costs for the next 4 years. I'd like to see what Matusz/Britton/Arrieta do this year before tearing everything back down again.

I really want Fielder to be using the nats for more money.

FYI- autograph vouchers for FanFest go on sale at 10am this Saturday.

I think Boras is waiting for Darvish to sign. Darvish doesn't sign than the Rangers could enter the bidding.

First, who has successfully done the "trade everybody" firesale? I think it's a fan favorite strategy but I think a lot of the times the return on the players isn't great, especially if you're trying to move everyone by an arbitrary deadline.

You'll have to define "nice pieces". Andrew Bailey returned Josh Reddick (potential everyday starter but a flawed player) and two minor leaguers who aren't anything special and are years away from contributing. I don't see Johnson returning more than that.

Even if we're eating some of Markakis' salary we're still talking about a RF whose range has diminished and doesn't have a lot of power. Are teams really banging down the door for that?

Hardy is arguably our second best trade chip after Wieters and I see us getting a prospect in the 26-50 range and probably another one around in the second half of the top 100. I guess those are nice pieces but the odds of them making it as everyday players are probably 50/50 at best.

I really don't understand why we have to do something drastic this offseason. Worst case scenario would be everyone has poor years and diminish their trade values but I find that scenario to be very unlikely. I'm sure someone will say not tearing it down immediately will put us a year further away from contention but I just don't think we have anything, besides Wieters, that would bring back a substantial return.

If the cavalry pitches better and gets us to 82 wins how isn't that exciting? I'm not talking about a "we're at .500 woohoo!" exciting but a "we're ~8 wins from contention and have most of that core locked up for 3 more years" exciting. I'm not trying to say that's going to happen or that we'll even reach 75 wins but I'd still like to see at least one more year with this core to see what they can do.

The ill-fated Syd Thrift firesale of 2000:

Mike Bordick to NYM for Melvin Mora, Leslie Brea, Mike Kinkade and Pat Gorman.

Mike Timlin to STL for Chris Richard and Mark Nussbeck.

Charles Johnson and Harold Baines to CHW for Brook Fordyce, Juan Figueroa, Jason Lakman and Miguel Felix..

Will Clark to STL for Jose Leon.

BJ Surhoff and Gabe Molina to ATL for Luis Rivera, Trinidad Hubbard and Fernando Lunar.

this was a straight-up robbery and doesn't belong here

Eh, obviously we got Mora, who became a great Oriole, AND we resigned Bordick in the offseason, but at the time Mora looked like he might just be a UTIL guy and I don't even think he was the one people were most excited about getting.

I was always impressed by Mora and Dotel when we played the Mets in interleague. I was hoping we could get both of them but I was thrilled to get MM in the MB deal.

However, the rest of the deals were crap. Didn't one of them have a guy who was really 3-4 years older then his listed age or something?

Oh, trading away Will Clark was a plus no matter who we got.

BTW, wasn't Chris Richard still playing in 2011? LOL

I don't really understand the idea of trading proven successful players that are going into their prime for prospects who have a high fail rate. For instance, we traded Miguel Tejada for Fat Albers, Troy Patton, Michael Costanzo, Luke Scott, and Dennis Sarfate. Most people when this trade happened said the Orioles won the trade big time and Troy Patton was believed to be the star piece in the trade. Looking back on that trade now Luke Scott was a solid player but nothing amazing and everyone else was pretty much absolutely nothing (Patton is now a long man in the bullpen).

Another good example is the Bedard trade. We got Jones who has been great but we also got Tillman. Tillman was the #22 prospect in baseball at one point. And we are now seeing that he is next to nothing and most people would not even include him at all in our young players with potential. That trade was certainly great and we certainly won it in the end but what I am trying to say is that it is not necessarily smart to get rid of proven veterans that are in their prime for prospects that could amount to nothing or could become something.

Just my humble opinion but I would rather have guys like Jones and Wieters who are entering their prime and will only get better (with Wieters potentially being and absolute stud) than guys that could be as good as Wieters and Jones but also could be absolutely nothing. The fail rate is obviously much higher in pitchers especially in this organization.

Agree with that bonnington. Like I said, we have a decent core of guys that are 1) relatively cheap and 2) entering their primes or are a few years away from their prime. Tearing it all down now means we won't compete for another 3-4 years and the odds are we'll likely end up with a similar group of guys if not worse.