How many professional ballplayers are from British Columbia?  I don't know.  Can't be very many, I imagine.  But somehow three of them have converged into a bizzarro vortex this December: Michael Saunders, Jason Bay and Tyson Gillies.

These three guys that we've all been spilling pixels over -- they're all from British Columbia.  I don't particularly care, it's just freaky-weird.

Saunders: I gar-ron-TEE that I was one of the first to tout the potential of young Mr. Saunders here or DOV or whatever it was at the time.  And I do remember one of the first things I said: left-handed (and Canadian) Cammy.  And I have also always said: learning curve.

I keep going back to his Canadian Olympic Team bio: "A solid hockey player when he was a child -- he was recruited by the Seattle Thunderbirds at one point -- Saunders has also dunked a basketball in high school and was also a notable lacrosse and soccer player as a youth. He gave up all of those sports to play baseball."

He raced up the minor league ladder much faster than I thought he would, and maybe Z thinks that, too.  Athlete he is; baseball player he is not quite.  Full time player in 2010 is a lot to ask, and more than I would ask.  But, for sure, a left-handed Cammy is a star at Safeco, and there is potential for more than that.

Gillies: If you can apply "position scarcity" to defense, can't you apply it to offense too?  If you view "genuine top-of-the-order hitter with high-OBP skills and game-disrupting speed" as a class of player, and if you view Tyson Gillies and likely to be one of that class, then, sure, I can see how you value him higher than a "generic" leftfielder prospect.

Gillies is genuinely fast and has gotten on base at a .400 clip so far in the minors.  If you think that will translate eventually into a game-changing leadoff guy, then he's a very valuable player.   I don't know if Z was being cagey or not, but I can see an org like the Phillies seeking out Gillies.

Bay: Here's the thing.  They can stay as currently configured, except adding a 1B/DH type, and Ken Griffey Jr. is your opening-day DH and Milton Bradley is your opening-day LF, and nobody is "handing" a major-league job to Saunders or Tui.  They are bench guys, role players, or in AAA.  Even though you know MB won't be your LF very often, on your "depth chart" to the world, Griffey and MB are "starters" -- your lead guys.  The fact that they won't either of them play full time gives you lots of opportunities to mix-and-match.  Both Saunders and Tui need this; and I expect that both of them might go up-and-back to Tacoma before it's all over: in which case you might be mixing in Langerhans or Hall.

Bay stomps that out, but adding a cheaper (in terms of $ and years) 1B (Branyan or whomever) does not.  If Luke Scott can actually play first, then maybe that's the best option of all.

Again, that doesn't make me anti-Bay.  It makes me against the loss of flexibility that winning Bay in a bidding war will create.  If Bay wants to come to Seattle without the bidding war and structure things in a way that preserves flexibility, then I'm all for it.  I definitely want some guys with SLG numbers starting with ".5"