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Doc/Jeff, I just have to say I love this site, and especially for posts like this. Balanced, thought provoking, holistic analysis. Plus as a bonus I get all the other contributors on here; this site has the best comment section of any site I've seen on ANY topic.
The other big M's blogs (excluding Baker) have jumped the shark for me so many times with their hysterical, entirely predictable, simplistic reactions to every move made by the M's. Plus, I know that I can come here and see their exact arguments restated more thoughtfully by you or the community.
I think it comes down to self-awareness. You have guys like Cameron who write things in an all-knowing tone - that literally every person in every MLB front office already knows - and has long ago moved on from, in favor of other more complex analysis (the type of analysis that I see here and on Baker regularly). It is weird and seems to be just a personality-based thing for the M's - not a Seattle thing, since you don't ever get this type of attitude on say Field Gulls.
It reminds me of my day job - I work in the business side of the music industry. I read the most prominent music bloggers, whose work I enjoy, and there still are so many things they just don't really get about the real complexities of the business. I can count on one hand, maybe one fist the number of outside ideas I've read where I went, huh that's useful, we hadn't thought of that.
Re the trade, truthfully, cut through the analysis and the only thing that worries me about losing Jaso is that Beane wanted him =) But, the guy's not ALWAYS right...right??
Anyway how about a couple Fangraphs TEAM metrics:
RSPCT - % chance of team having one actual single player (not a platoon combo or theoretical park-adjusted player) hit 30 HR in a season. This could be also be called WSODDS since 7 of the 9 post-steroid WS winners and 8 of 9 runner ups have had at least one. (Exceptions being the two SF winners and the 06 Tigers who had 28, 27, 26, 24).
BLOGUMILITY - confidence of a team's most prominent local bloggers in their analysis and predictions, divided by # of all-time WS appearances by said team. This could be broken into the two component parts - the M's would be near the league lead in blogger confidence, while they and the Nationals/Expos would be the only teams to have 0 WS appearances (and who wants to bet on which one gets there first?). The combined stat column on Fangraphs would just read ERR for the M's.