Yes, I’m going into “baseball mode”…prepare yourselves!

First off, if you missed any of the big trades, Jason Stark has a good article where he sums up the winners and losers of the trade deadline and kind of goes through what happened. Check it.

So what are the biggest impact trades that happened?

1. Nomar going to the Cubs – This is big for the Cubs, who have been really searching for a shortstop that didn’t suck ass for a long time. However, Nomar is been highly over rated in the last few years. He has shown himself to be a whinny bitch and his production has been down more and more the last few years. Not only that, but the defense has never been this bad. The Red Sox however, get Orlando Cabera, who is still a mystery. He could be great under the Boston pressure or he could be crushed. (If that happens: long live the “Pokey” era!) The Red Sox also got a good first baseman, with something to prove in Doug Mientkiewicz…oh yeah, they got Dave Roberts too, who can be usefull at times and is surprisingly fast.

2. All the new Marlins – The Marlins really pulled this one off. They filled every hole they had. Jason Stark goes over this very well in his article, and I agree with him fully, so I won’t repeat him. This is just a great job over a few trades…I mean, they stole Lo Duca, the central player of the Dodgers, for nothing.

3. The Dodgers and the Yankees – These deals that these teams did was an impact in the other direction. The Dodgers made prelim deals without checking on whether or not the players they really wanted, wanted them (i.e. Randy Johnson and Charles Johnson). They traded some good players to get some spare parts, none of them are impact players, and never got the players they really wanted. Ouch.. Paul Depodesta looks kinda foolish right now. He is smarter than this, and we may see something happen at the real dealine for the waiver trades before we can really write him off.
The Yankees seemingly made a deal just to make one. They are no better than they were before. Actually, they might be worse. I have never had that much faith in Estaban Lozia. But apparently Brian Cashman does.

There are more trades that I would love to discuss, and I might later on this weekend. But I need to get going. However, some final comments:

- I can’t believe that after all that “No, he is our future!” talk, the Mets trade Kazmir at seemingly, the drop of a hat to the Devil Rays.

- For all my friends: I told you that Randy Johnson would still be a Diamondback by now!

- Theo Epstein did a bang up job helping his defesivly retarded team and clearing up some future off season messes.

- Go see the Manchurian Canidate. It was great!