Trading Buehrle$$ + Rasmus for Eaton + Skaggs + Davidson
Trading Santos/Janssen + Izturis$ for Porcello/Fister
"I hate you because you know the business better than me. Your success makes me hate you"
some dire words from J.P. Ricciardi at the end of a miserable 2009 season suddenly seem apt for the moment.
"Let me make this clear: It doesn’t matter if J.P. Ricciardi is the GM, or Joe Blow is the GM," he told me that September in what turned out to be the epitaph interview of his tenure as Toronto Blue Jays general manager. "Two years from now, five years from now, seven years from now, the reality that we face in Toronto is the division is not going to change. The Red Sox and Yankees are not going away. If the Yankees want to, they can take their payroll to $300-million.
"The biggest thing that people forget is that when Toronto won the World Series, they had the highest payroll in baseball. There’s a direct equivalent to that. If we’re going to play in the big man’s division, and we’re not going to spend that money, it’s going to be really hard for us to compete with those teams."
jcrasnick
Chone Figgins is closing in on minor league deal with #dodgers, source says. Includes invite to big league camp.
The Orioles are smiling right now.