Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Bay Watch


I hope these reports are true. In fact, I pray that they are. We stumbled across espn.com's Winter Meetings blog and came across this doozy:

3:09 p.m., from Steve Phillips - The Pirates and Indians are talking about a potential Jason Bay trade. Pittsburgh would get catcher Kelly Shoppach and left-hander Cliff Lee for the two-time All-Star.

Then
Rotoworld followed up - ESPN's Steve Phillips believes the Pirates are looking at Cliff Lee and Kelly Shoppach from the Indians as a potential return for Jason Bay. That'd be quite a Christmas present from Pirates GM Neal Huntington to his old boss in Cleveland. Even with a new regime in place, the Pirates still appear to feel like they can never have enough left-handed starting pitchers. Lee would join Tom Gorzelanny, Paul Maholm and Zach Duke in the Pittsburgh rotation, seemingly opening up the door for either Ian Snell or Matt Morris to get traded.

I couldn't agree more with Rotoworld. As much as I love the Shop-Vac, he is still the backup catcher. So you are telling me that the Indians can give up their backup catcher and their 7th starter who is an overpaid, clubhouse cancer, whiner, who doesn't fit in with this current club's profile for a guy who would hit cleanup between Victor and Pronk? Where do I sign up.

This is also more proof that allowing Huntington to go to Pittsburgh will be no great loss to the Indians front office. Anyone who would consider that trade needs their head examined. We can only hope that Huntington agrees to pull the trigger and fast. This could be another Shapiro steal. While all of this sounds great in theory, The Cleveland Plain Dealer's Paul Hoynes said in this morning's PD that trade talks between the Indians and Pittsburgh about outfielder Jason Bay have ended without a deal being reached. I don't know who to believe.

It's imperative the Indians do something to improve as it looks more and more like the Red Sox could land Johan Santana as soon as today. I heard Karl Ravich on ESPN Radio say yesterday that he hopes this doesn't happen because it will ruin the competitive balance of the league. I agree. When the Red Sox and Yankees want someone, they go out and get them and nobody else has a chance. Imagine a rotation of Santana, Josh Beckett, Dice-K, Schilling, and top prospect Clay Buckholz. That would be pretty fair. The top four guys would make more than the Indians entire payroll once Santana gets his extension.

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