The trading deadline has passed, and Sir Neal has managed not to harm the future core, he kept all serviceable starting arms, and has continued his stockpile of average to above average potential talent at the 4A levels. But he did that by decimating our only 2010 strength, the bullpen. All the other blogs and outlets have done all the long exhaustive previews, reviews (and get the page views), so I'll keep it short and sweet:
OUT: Bobby Crosby, Ryan Church and DJ Carrasco IN: Chris Snyder and Pedro Ciriaco
I am flabbergasted that Arizona took the dead weight of Crosby and Church. That alone would warrant this trade a win, but we also received two baseball players! Essentially this is Carrasco for Snyder, which is a great trade. Carrasco will be missed in mop up duty, but he had little chance of hanging around. Snyder should be our starter for the next 2 years, as it looks like the nightmare of Ryan "It Gets By" Doumit behind the plate is over. Thank God. Hopefully Snyder will add a little pop to the lineup, while playing excellent D and handling a young staff. Finally, a real catcher! Nothing too exciting about Ciriaco, just organizational depth, and someone for me to watch in Indianapolis other than Brian Bixler.
OUT: Octavio Dotel IN: James McDonald and Andrew Lambo
Dotel had to go at the deadline. There was no point in keeping a closer for the team playing .350 ball, especially when there were two good internal options. I don't like that JR hasn't named a closer yet, as the committee thing never works. My vote is for Hanrahan in the 9th, Meek in the 8th. McDonald could be interesting, and he gets his first look tomorrow night. If Lambo lays of the weed, who knows? Last year these two guys were the Dodgers best prospects, but then again so was Andy LaRoche once ...
OUT: Javier Lopez IN: John Bowker and Joe Martinez
Easy trade here too, as teams always overpay for situational relievers on July 31. Bowker is basically another Moss or Clement in that he's had some minor league but no major league success. There are a lot of the 1B-OF types suddenly in the system, and I'm wondering if one of these guys could get packaged with Doumit at the winter meetings. We're running out of room for all these options. Not to excited about Martinez, he sounds like another end of rotation starter, possible bullpen guy. We're swimming in these types right now. But still a decent haul for a loogy we didn't really need.
Neal's first priority post-deadline has been addressing the bullpen, just today finding Chris Resop and Chan Ho Park in the trash bins (although I think he needs to focus all his energy in signing BOTH Taillon and Allie in the next couple weeks). The bullpen is an absolute shambles, and hopefully Chan Ho Park can eat the innings that JR would normally give to Meek. Judging by his performance against the Reds last night, it looks to me like Evan's innings needs to be closely monitored, and some twitterer (sorry I can't remember who) even suggested "Joba Rules" for Evan, which is a fantastic idea before JR goes all Dusty on him.
Second Half Goal of 37-37? Currently 7-12, need to finish 30-25. Ugh. Go Bucs.
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