What would Bob Barker say?
OK: I'm sure somone will do a more complete review of this. But I'll jump in. At first blush:
1. We could have had Price for Franklin and Walker/Paxton. You can deduce that, I think. We held on to our young arms. Could we have got Price for Franklin and Elias? Ah....Don't know. Likely not. Undoubtedly, the Rays valued Smyly more than Elias.
2. Short term winners are the Tigers, clearly. Short term being '14-'15. Son of a gun if they don't have a pretty wonderful staff right now. Wooooo-eeeee! After that the winner may well be the Rays. They are likely the long term winner. We get Jackson for two seasons, guaranteed. Ditto Detroit and Price. Both will likely get much more expensive after '15. If I'm the M's, I probably try to extend Jackson, soon. For the Rays, Smyly and Franklin are longer-term plays. Remember that Smyly was pretty darn good last year. But the M's are not losers here. Just not big-time winners. We got a very quality MLB RHB CF'er (better than a COF) for a guy we couldn't find a place for. Jackson isn't a big time RH masher (in fact he runs a career reverse split, by a fair margin), but he has no glaring weakness at the plate (.764 vR/ .731 vL), except he doesn't hit HR's, really. Well, give him a dozen a year. He's a kind of RHB that might play well in Safeco. But he can pick it and he can run and he's a very good player. Jackson-Ackley-Cano-Kendrys-Seager is a nice R-L-L-S-L mix because Ackley is kind of a reverse split guy, too. If Ackley keeps it up and if Kendrys finds a stroke (not much sign yet) then this is a very respectable top of the lineup.
3. Denorfia is a one and done guy who is in a slump this year but he has a history of hitting lefties: .301-.367-.443! That'll do pig! You can pretty much bet he shares RF duties for the duration. Well, I suppose we him give exclusive 1st shot. He's just a .677 bat against RHP, however. I will be surprised if Hart gets any RF time.
4. Romero likely gets a ticket to Tacoma. Chavez will get offered one if I'm running the ship (because I'm tired of him being here). We may likely move Jones down to play CF in Tacoma with Almonte gone. But Jones is no longer our CF of the "immediate" future. Hart just became a platoon 1B with Morrison/Smoak....whoever we decide to hitch the wagon to. We can't, BTW, continue to wait for Morrison to heat up. But the same is true for Hart. We may just fall back to Smoak. As much as I hate to say it (Gulp!), that is a better option. We need runs. Throw the Smoak spaghetti at the wall.
5. Taken with the swap for Morales, these were moves that made us better. But I'm not sure they were moves that made us better enough and I know they were moves that are 30 games late. Franklin for Jackson gets us a better player than if we had sent Smoak for Rios. But it came late and we gave up a player with (for now) a bit more market value.
6. We're all in with our young arms (Paxton-Walker-Elias) for next year. It is a fair bet that Ackley-Jackson-Saunders will be three of our 4 OF'ers in '15. There are two question marks in that setup, by the way (Ackley and Saunders' health)
7. And we will enter the '15 year needing two bats, which sounds familiar. We might be chasing a COF bat (depending on what we think of Ackley and of Saunders' health concerns), a DH bat and a 1B bat. Choi/Morrison/Smoak/Morales (?) are potentially in that mix. But we will have to sign an impact bat. It will be a must. Which is where we were a month ago, btw. Keep an eye on our play for the Cuban guys.
8. That's my read at first glance. We did OK. We made a move. We got better. But it still seeems like we could have got a .750 RHB about a month ago. We could have used it then. Sure we got better but I'm not sure we got enough better soon enough.
9. One thumb up is about right. If we had acquired guys like this a month ago I would give this a "B" for a grade. Now? No better than a "C."
That's my take. Your mileage may vary.
moe