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Or maybe a battlefield would be more accurate. The corpses of the many who have tried and failed to hold that piece of outfield turf are numerous.  The casualties keep mounting, too.  I was just hoping for Jose Guillen style production at some point, nothing crazy...
But it looks like it's gonna be a while.  I'm not a believer in Mike Wilson or Carlos Peguero, Tenbrink has fallen off a cliff, we're trying to keep Liddi at 3B, Mangini's injuries and hatred of the walk make him hard to project as a plus hitter, Raben has plateaued and his injuries make him basically a DH...
The next LF hope might well be Pimentel as you say, or Castillo who is also a 2 million dollar bonus baby.  In the meantime, that's where I'd be looking to plug in a vet for a few years.
As for the AA bats, you're right that I'm thinking of those guys as trade bait because I have better options ahead of them.  Richie Sexson got traded because he was stuck behind some dude named Thome.  Poythress isn't gonna dethrone Smoak, so either he moves to LF or he moves on.  Seager is performing beautifully, and could be a super-sub for us on the cheap in a year or two...but I would think someone willing to give him a starting spot might have a decent hitter at a glove position.  He won't be dethroning Ackley, though, even if with Gutierrez's status up in the air it might be nice to have Ackley in CF and Seager at 2B in 2013.
And Triunfel is ahead of Franklin in both level and production to start this year, so he should have the inside track...but I don't think he does.  They are positions we could afford to give up a decent player at because we have some redundancy.
Arm-wise, Robles being injured really hurts us.  Hensley is still a pen arm IMO, Hill's injury sucked, and I think Moran is hurt.  Pryor has NOTHING right now as he tries to shake off the rust.  We have a few pen arms like Kesler, Burgoon and Bischoff who are trying to impress but they're a couple years off.
Fields can't stop walking everyone.  After Lueke I don't see a lot immediately for the pen, and after Wilhelmsen I don't see much for starters til Robles gets back...and his injury may be the excuse they need to move him to the pen and try to make him a closer-type.
Erasmo is interesting, but he's a BOR type.  It's very hard to be Mark Buehrle.
Paxton is getting a little work, Walker doesn't even know how to pitch yet, and Campos throws HARD but not well...not yet.
Shipers is another guy I really wanna see, but should start off in Everett.  Taylor too.  But they're on the 4-5 year plan.  Immediate help?  Not a lot more right now.  Gilheeney has impressed me by not getting killed in his first month in the desert, but it's hard to judge pitchers there.  He should be in AA before year end if he can keep from getting shelled though, and give us a better idea if some extra arms are getting closer to the bigs.
Luckily for us Fister and Vargas are still throwing well, and rotation spots aren't open by the handful.  We need a better pen, but a couple of arms would help a lot and pen arms aren't as hard to come by.
~G