When I was a kid I used to get excited about teams beefing up for the home stretch with deals around the trading deadline. But now it’s all about MONEY. BIG MONEY! Let’s level the playing field and bring parity to baseball. I know what you’re thinking, the Brewers, Twins, Marlins, & Rays are all still in the race. That’s true, but there’s something wrong when teams can steal players away for next to nothing, all because of money.
Big market teams like the Yankees & the Angels can virtually get stars for nothing. Ivan Rodriguez going to New York for Kyle Farnsworth is obsene, so is Mark Teixeira being traded to the LA Angels of Anaheim for Casey Kotchman. You can’t laud GM’s who steal players from smaller market ballclubs. I am not putting teams down for taking advantage of the situation that currently exists in baseball, I just wish MLB would do something to correct it.
Some of you may be wondering my take on the White Sox getting future Hall of Famer Ken Griffey, Jr. in exchange for Nick Masset & Danny Richar. While I agree that Masset & Richar are marginal prospects at best, Junior hasn’t really done anything for the Reds this year, and the jury is out as to whether he’ll be able to play CF & help the White Sox down the stretch this year.
A good article but I have two points:
The first is a piddly one but I have to quibble with you about Junior’s production. He may not be having an MVP year but he’s solid all things considered.
Second, and this goes for Griffey and IROD, GMs may not be trading just for productive players but for commodities. In other words, what players will help them put fan(nies) in the seats. Griffey and IROD are big names no matter how well they do.
Granted, Yankee stadium wont have any problem with that either way but I think that factors in.
but yeah, I agree with you. :)