Not yet. We’re still waiting to see how this plays out. The way I see it, Torre puts Manny in Left, Ethier in Center and Kemp in Right, and uses Pierre to spell Manny when he’s feeling iffy, which can be any time at all. Young gets demoted to Single A ball in Guam. With Blake shoring up our problem at Third, I think we now stands a decent chance of crushing the D-backs into the dust, which is only fitting and proper. 
I know I’ve been bemoaning our lack of a Big Bat, but I never expected this!
Now why did I say Young? Of course, I meant Andruw Jones. (Spit!)
I’m glad to be rid of him, he was a salary albatross on our small market team, especially given that we never got the Griffey that Seattle had in the 1990’s due to injuries.
I wonder if the recent “throat-slashing” and profanity blowup with local announcer Jeff Brantley had anything to do with it?
Glad to take him off your hands. I think you guys will like Masset and Richar–Masset is a solid reliever, this I already know, and the times I’ve seen Richar, usually in spring training, I have been impressed by his speed.
This reminds me of the time the Sox picked up the post-replacement hip Bo Jackson… he wasn’t great in '93 but he did provide some exciting moon shots! I hope Griff can find the fountain of youth with the prospect of a pennant chase on the line.
Oh, and he’ll play some center(urk!). We’ll just replace him with Anderson in the late innings.
And here at the end of the day the Mariners still have Ibanez and Washburn. We picked up a decent pitching prospect but dangit.
Oh… and we still have our “DH”, Vidro. :smack:
Your current and most recent GM and baseball Braintrust are what in baseball circles are called “absolute idiots”. That is a tech term of course.
The Mariners have been doing a terrible job for quite a while now. They fired a bad GM and the replacement seems just as dumb. Do you know where in the management chain the problem really is? Is it all the way at the top?
Don’t get me started on this one. I think The Onion has made fun of us four or five times this year.
I suspect it goes up to Howard Lincoln and Chuck Armstrong. Word is the ownership jumps in once in awhile, e.g. the Kenji extension, but I don’t know if that has ever been substantiated. There are miles of threads about this over on the Mariner blogs so I won’t get into it too much here except to say their ability to continuously hire, sign, and trade for the players and personnel they do is astounding. Astounding in how horrible it is.
lmao at that one…
Meanwhile the Angels continue their dominance over the other potential playoff teams. They are spanking the Yanks tonight 10-2 with 3 3-run homers. 
DSYoungEsq, Thank you.
Rack-a-Bones: So it is just general meddling and interference and refusal to hire a good GM and let him do his job. So they learned how to run a baseball team by studying George Steinbrenner. Unfortunately they only studied the 80s in detail.
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Anyway, to answer your query, Bay, the pride of Canada (well it isn’t Eric Gagne anymore) originally came up with the Padres. The Padres, wanting some more star power, dealt for Brian Giles from the Pirates in exchaange for Bay and Oliver Perez. Bay got off to late start to his career, but upon being dealt, almost immediately became an all star. For the last 6 years he has consistently been the best player on a bad team putting up numbers in the range of 30 home-runs, 100 rbis, 300 avg, and a dozen or so steals. Last year was his first bad year with the Pirates, as he put up lackluster numbers due to, in part, a knee injury. He has bounced back this year though hitting ~280 with 22 or so home-runs.
I will say it is amazing how fast Red Sox fans have turned on the guy. Manny was an integral part of two world series championships, the first of which Red Sox fans were willing to soul for. Now he is a clubhouse cancer that must be gotten rid of at all costs.
That said, I don’t actually think the Red Sox made a bad deal. While Bay doesn’t quite replace Manny’s bat, he isn’t that far off, as Manny isn’t the force he once was. Bay is a much better defensive outfielder and base runner, enough to rid most of the offensive gap. They also get him signed through 2009 at a below market rate even considering the extra 7 million going to LA. Moss and Hansen are fringe prospects, not players who really affect the balance of power of this trade. Hansen has regressed significantly since he was a top relief prospect and Moss projects as no more then a 4th outfielder. They weren’t going to have key roles on the Red Sox.
I also like the deal for the Pirates as they got a cornerstone player to play third for the next 6 years in Laroche. The rest for them is just gravy. It wasn’t a terrible deal for the Dodgers either, but I still think they were better off with 6 years of Laroche, then two months of Manny.
If we go with the premise that the Red Sox had to dump Manny than I guess giving up the two prospects they gave up for 14 months of Jason Bay is not too bad. However, the fact the Red Sox could not figure out how to keep Manny semi-happy to finish out a season means the Red Sox come out losers on this deal. I think the Dodgers made enough moves to have a good chance to take a weak division and that is why they rolled the dice and dumped a third base prospect that apparently they were not as high on as you are Hawkeyeop.
BTW: The biggest winner in all of this is sadly Scott Boras. Manny took him on as an agent. Boras convince Manny that he can get him a 4 year deal worth $100 million. If the Red Sox had signed the extension, Manny’s old agent would have got the commission and not Boras. So even if Boras fails to get Manny $20 million per year, Boras sadly comes out ahead. Boras is a cancer on baseball. I hope this turns out poorly for Manny so more players will realize that Boras is only looking out for Boras and not them.
I also wonder is Manny being Manny and this act of striking while a team is in a pennant race and he is already making $20 million per year will cost Manny enough votes to prevent him from being a first ballot Hall of Famer that his stats clearly show he should be, but his actions show he should not.
I am not advocating that he does not get into the Hall, just that he gets dissed enough to not make it the first year he is eligible. I got thinking about this yesterday when I realized that three probably first round Hall of Famers got moved in 24 hours.
Jim
I’m assuming you meant Kemp in center and Ethier in right. Ethier’s got a gun, but not as great an arm as Kemp, and Kemp is much faster. Otherwise, I agree with you.
The stadium was definitely buzzing about Manny last night. In fact, during every at bat by Andruw Jones, people started chanting Manny’s name. I think some of us were hoping that Jones would channel Manny a bit, but we see how well that turned out. But lots of folks had written or appended Manny’s name to their jerseys. It’s possible the Dodgers could have won the division without him, but getting some real offense makes it seem a lot more realistic.
The Dodgers really need to take the last three games of this series, and we have the potential to do so. So long as Manny doesn’t forget how to hit once he gets here, we’re going to be in very good shape.
Yankees split with the Angels, though it took some doing. Nady earned his keep today. Angels showed a little crack in the armor with their defense. Maybe it was an anomaly, but they don’t look invinceable, as good as they are.
It was amazing to see their defense fall apart like that. Giese looked great and Rasner might be losing his job soon. Giese and Ian Kennedy are the front runners to knock him out of the rotation. Kei Igawa is always a wild card, but as he is off the 40 man at the moment, I doubt it.
Ian’s last four starts in Scranton have been great. He has 3 wins and no losses and 4 earned runs over 27 innings, 5 BBs and 20 Ks. He pitched and won today, so he is right on rotation.
Rodney came in with a 5 to 4 lead. He hit one, walked one ,hit another one . It got tied with single. Then strike out. Then walked in the winning run. Disgusting. Tigers can not move without relievers. Zumaya is hurt again. Rodney is a head case. Todd Jones on DL. We just got Farnsworth. I hope he is ready to shoulder a huge load.
Didn’t he blow it today? I thought I saw a highlight of him giving up 2.