Tuesday, December 19, 2006

More life to the party...

The latest rumor sends LaRoche to Baltimore for Hayden Penn and possibly Chris Ray. As I've said before, I like the idea of getting Ray. This would certainly boost our bullpen now and for the future. Pitching was the #1 objective this offseason and JS is striving towards that. I just hope Scott Thorman is ready to play.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another thing that I've discussed on our forums about this trade, is that it gives us another pitcher that we could possibly spin for Baldelli or Rios. Davies has been mentioned as a possible piece in a deal for each of them, acquiring Penn will give us a guy to spin off, or at least not leave us with only 4 starters if we were to trade Davies.

Adam said...

Josh-Exactly. I read the piece about Davies and Rios. Rios or Baldelli would defintely be welcome in Atlanta. Once something is finnally done for LaRoche the Braves should set all concentration towards getting one of the two.

Out of curiousity, who would you trade for either Rios or Baldelli?

Anonymous said...

Well, this is kind of confusing because I feel that Rios is the better player, but Baldelli would require more because of TB's front office.

Baldelli - It would probably take something like Davies, Salty and Escobar.
Rios - I think we could get him for Davies and Escboar.

Ideally, the Jays would want a better starter, but they also need a 2B/SS so that would give Escobar more value to them. Apparently, TB would do James and Escobar for Rocco in an instant, but we aren't dealing James. I don't see Escobar as being *that* good of a player, but with his showing in the AFL, he's got value. We need to run with it while we've got it at our disposal.

I wouldn't make these trades without having another starter to turn to. If we were to get Penn, sub him in for Davies. I think they're about equal in terms of value, but I don't think we've ever seen Davies healthy in Atlanta. There's a reason why he was thought of as a better prospect than Chuck coming through the system.

Also, if we were to acquire Rios, I'd keep him in RF and move Jeff to LF. Rios is the superior defender and would be more valuable in RF. Rios could move to CF in 2008 when Andruw bolts and Jeff could shift back to RF.