How many transactions can I cover in one post? At least five

So today a bunch of transaction moves went down in Baseball and i'm attempting to squeeze my take on all of them into one post.


A) Indians trade Carl Pavano to the Twins for a play to be named later.

Wow....the Indians have traded away so many players that they are now down to trading players that aren't even good (Pavano) apparently just for the sake of trading players away. While it is commendable that Pavano has not been injured for 90% of the season for once......he just hasn't been that good 9-8 5.37 era 84 ERA+

For the Twins this is a low-risk/high desperation move.....this is an apparent attempt at them to strengthen their starting rotation in the hopes of winning the AL Central (they're 4 1/2 back going into today)...the only problem is that Pavano is no better or worse than the back of rotation pitchers such as Francisco Liriano, Glen Perkins, Kevin Slowey and Anthony Swarzak....it's not that I think Pavano is going to bomb out (like he did for the Yankees) I just don't see him putting the twins over the hump.

B) The possible unceremonious ending to a couple of careers.

The night after a rough outing in New York, the Red Sox pulled the cord on John Smoltz. Since coming back from injury he has had a disastarous season going 2-5 with a 8.32 era. I really hope that this isn't the end for Smoltz since he deserves to go out on his own terms and another chance to help a contending team in desperate need of pitching.......in light of his career post-season success some team may take a flier on him but after his stint in Boston, that's unlikely

Jason Giambi got released while still on the DL. This potential ending isn't too shocking since his batting average was south of the mendoza line but he still had a somewhat respectable obp of .332........he did endure controversy with his steroid use...but he taught us an important lesson....if you admit to doing something wrong, even if you don't say explicitly what that said wrong thing is......you won't necessarily be forgiven you just won't have your entire reputation tarnished.....players such as Clemens, Bonds, Sosa could learn an important lesson from this


C) Alex Rios got claimed on waivers from a team......but which team.....nobody knows?

This has been one of the more bizarre stories in a while. It seems like overkill to say that another team made a claim on him but shhhhhh.....we can't say who it is. This almost sounds like a story you'd see in The Onion...........this move will impact the pennant race in some point....assuming he got picked up by a contender.....but there's no way of knowing since his future team is some league-held secret

D) Brewers call up Jesus Colome from Nashville

Low Risk/High Reward move.....the Brewers have had success with pitchers picked up the scrap heap in recent years [Todd Coffey is a perfect example of this] and Colome does fit the example of this since he pitched bad enough that not even the Nationals wanted him.

In limited duty in Nashville, Colome pitched really well. However, it's tough to see if this will translate into big league success. On the bright side, even if this turns out not to be a genius move, there's no way he can be worse than the player he replaced [R.J. Swindle]


whew.........that was a lot to cover in the post.......back to watching more MLB Network