Seriously -- call Ned and see if he wants Sabean and Alfonzo for Jayson Werth and a front office intern to be named later.

So, we've exchanged a middling has-been of a relief pitcher, one who spends his off days hanging out at Borders, for a middling has-been of a relief pitcher who apparently will spend his off-days at the Punch Line.

To summarize:

Hawkins-Williams-Aardsma-Hawkins+Kline+Worrell+extra payroll+(Morris-extra payroll)=Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2004 St. Louis Cardinals! Meh. Brian Sabean has once again squeezed blood from the stone of mediocrity.

I mean, what happened: We lost one heavy-duty quality LHR to free agency, so we acquire another (more on that later); in order to be able to do that (since a replacement wasn't available through free agency) we trade our RH set-up man; and in order to be able to do that we sign another FA RH set-up man to replace him. Nothing intrinsically flawed in the global scheme of things, seems to me. We had a strong bullpen - and still do. We had great depth and could withstand an injury or two - and still do. We were in position to give up one of the young relievers as part of a trade for a hitter - and still are.

Latroy Hawkins was one of the most unpopular players on the team. Not just among the ESPN-board-type hysterics, but here too. Partly, because trading Jerome for him was a stunner. Partly, because his performance in Chicago had been so poor. Partly, because his salary was so out of line with anything we'd been paying non-closers (and seemingly came at the expense of making other improvements in the team). But most importantly, because his performance with us was so uneven and unsettling. Sometimes dominant, sometimes horrible, always the sense that he'd totally lost his confidence and the dread that you didn't know which of the Hawkins you were getting that day.

Steve Kline was one of the best LH relievers out there for a while. Here's what ESPN wrote about him at the end of 2004: "One of baseball's most effective lefthanded relievers, Kline mixes a hard slider and a sinking fastball. He is not afraid to run deep counts rather than throwing something over the heart of the plate, and he can also get key double plays with his sinker... Before the injuries, Kline was a key reliever for the National League champions, allowing runs in only eight of his 67 outings and going the entire season without allowing an earned run at home".

There had been reports on the Giants interest in Kline for a couple of years. They had a chance to sign him a year ago, but let him get away. Perhaps because they seriously miscalculated where the reliever market was going (if I'm not mistaken, the $5.5/2yrs deal he signed with Baltimore is almost exactly what Worrell signed for with Philly a year earlier - and Sabean admitted last week that he'd made a huge mistake in not re-signing Worrell because of money). Or perhaps because they were worried (and rightly so) about the torn tendon in Kline's finger. But his second-half numbers last year, like Worrell's, were fine. And while my mention elsewhere of his 4-year history with Matheny was immediately greeted with ESPN-board-like scorn, I don't think its insignificant at all.

No one here thinks that we should have re-signed Eyre at $11m/3yrs (even assuming he would have agreed). The mistake with Eyre was not signing him to an extension a year earlier, when he would have agreed to two years for much less money. The mistake with Hawkins was acquiring him in the first place, particularly with a $4.35m salary looming in 2006. The mistake with Worrell was letting him get away after the 2003 season and thinking Herges could fill in if Nen didn't come back. Thats a lot of mistakes, for sure - but given where we were at the end of the 2005 season, with Eyre leaving and Hawkins as our top setup guy, putting Worrell and Kline in place instead of Eyre and Hawkins isn't bad at all. And cheaper, even if we covered the difference in salaries in the O's deal, because Worrell is much less expensive than Eyre (and I agree with Pants Man that its unlikely that just unloading Hawkins' salary was possible, plus the reduced depth would have made it riskier to use one of young relievers in a trade).

Will it work out? Who the hell knows. But it seems to me that getting Worrell and Kline instead of a Hawkins we didn't trust and an Eyre we couldn't (and shouldn't, at those numbers) have re-signed is pretty good. It certainly isn't anything worth tearing our hair out over.

The question is what happens elsewhere. If we don't sign Matt Morris or someone else for the front of the rotation, or if we don't trade for a hitter - that's when I'll be tearing my hair out. What's left of it, that is.

The smoking lamp is lighted

That is all