Yet another selection from the transcripts:
Brian Sabean: C'mon, Terry. Just give us Lohse.Terry Ryan: I know what you're saying, but business is business. You'll have to give us something in return....
Sabean: Great, you can have Edgard...
Ryan: ...that we would want.
Sabean: I see. So, we have already given you a top closer, a frontline prospect who is going to be a big part of your rotation next year, and a decent AAA prospect. That's not enough for Lohse? That should get us Carlos Silva.
Ryan: But that was a different trade, Brian. You can't retroactively even out lopsided trades.
Sabean: It's not that, but...hold on, I have another call.
clicks over
Sabean: Yello?
Dave Littlefield: Brian, hey, this is Dave from the Pirates. Look, I was just sitting in my office trying to figure out how to send a robot back in time to make sure Ryan Vogelsong was never born, and I had a kind of "Shining"-moment. All of a sudden, my body got cold, my hands got clammy, I started to shake.... You aren't complaining about a trade that didn't work out for your team, are you?
Sabean: No. No, I am not.
Littlefield: Huh. Weird. Okay, I was just making sure. I think, both morally and legally, you have to wait until Schmidt retires to do something like that, but you know that. Sorry to bother you.
Sabean: No problem.
clicks over
Sabean: Sorry about that. Telemarketers. Now I'm reading the fine print of the deal, and I think there's a clause that's going to make you have to return Liriano. It looks like the clause was written in fresh crayon two minutes ago, which is just weird, but that's just not possible as it was a part of the original deal. I'm faxing you over a copy, just in case your copy of the original deal and MLB's copy happen to burn in serious office fires tonight. Now, if you were just to give us Lohse....
The trade market for non-arbitration pitchers is grim. David Wells is disfatisfied and demanding a trade. He'd be a great acquisition if it didn't require talent going back to the Red Sox, which it would. Tom Glavine's career might have been the Schwarzenegger to Kirk Rueter's Devito, but that's a contract not worth entertaining, and it ain't like Schwarzenegger's still got the Mr. Universe body going either. Jason Jennings was a Rookie of the Year, but that's nothing more than a shiny bauble to distract the Giants while the Rockies rifle through our stuff.
Going up and down the depth charts of all the major league teams was not very enlightening. If a pitcher isn't heading into arbitration, and he isn't Eric Milton, then he isn't being shopped by his team. The Twins have no reason to trade Carlos Silva, the Indians have no reason to break up their emerging staff, and the Nationals aren't going to trade a pitcher with Esteban Loiza possibly leaving. You can write similar quips about every other team.
It seems like no one is willing to trade cheap and effective pitching for a handful of nothing. What is this world coming to? It'd be hard to get a pitcher of note if we were offering an armload of something. Take a plunge on the free-agent market, or scoop up the arbitration-eligible pitchers who are going to break their organization's budget; those are the only two options that seem to make sense for the Giants.