Monday, December 17, 2007

Some Follow-up

Since the Edmonds trade story broke, it's been comparatively slow on the Cardinals news front. Especially if you choose to ignore the story on Fernando Vina (which I do).

But it gave me a chance to peruse some of the Cardinal Blogdome reaction to the trade. And as always, Viva El Birdos is the site I visited first. To quote some snippets from the article:

the news that jim edmonds asked for this trade has done little to stop the angry recriminations over it. there are still plenty of people out there --- including a few who e-mailed me yesterday --- who insist that thte [sic] deal was born of dewitt's money-grubbing and/or mozeliak's stupidity.
and

however the cardinals spend the $6m, that return will get added to the value the cards have already received in exchange for edmonds, david freese. frustrated jed fans are dismissing this guy as a piece-a-shit prospect, which isn't fair; he'll never be a star, but he has a decent chance of delivering a few seasons of league-average offense.
I assume that, although Larry could have just checked the diaries at SportsNation to gauge reactions to the trade, he surfed the web to a few other sites. Which got me thinking: I know he's read this site in the past; I don't know how often he reads it since I came back here from mvn.com. Was my post one of the ones 'dismissing this guy as a piece-of-shit prospect'?

Yeah, it could be interpreted that way.

In hindsight, in the paragraph above the second Edmonds photo, I should have inserted the word 'apparently' between "because they" and "got so". That more accurately describes how I feel about the trade. The rest of the post is as neutral as I wanted it to be. Freese didn't appear on any Padre top 10 prospect list I could find, but I didn't want to dismiss him as a player of the caliber of Pete Rose, Jr, so I tried to portray some of his successes as well. Let's face it: guys named MVP of their league are pretty good regardless of which league they play for.

In all honesty, we won't know if this trade is a good one or a bad one for at least two more years. We'll have to wait and see how Freese progresses in the Cardinal system. Or, if he gets packaged into a deal for another player, we'll evaluate that player's performance to see if it was worth having the rights to Freese at all.

Josh over at mvn.com? That guy's downright hysterical about this trade. Which I have to say I found somewhat amusing.

I understand the long-term vision behind the trade, though I still think the Cardinals didn't get much in return; but I'm willing to wait and see how Freese pans out before I start organizing a 'pitchfork and torch' march through downtown St Louis.

1 comment:

Cardinal70 said...

I agree, the return wasn't what you'd expect, but they did free up some money, which if they turn into a top pick in the draft this year, could mean that Edmonds was dealt for two prospects, which would seem reasonable.

We'll just have to see what they do with the money. At least this way Jim can go out on a contender.