Nothing quite as excruciating as watching your team lose a star outfielder to a sorry team within the division — for unreasonably big bucks, mind — while watching them haplessly pursue bargain bin replacements like Jeff Francoeur, Matt Diaz, George Sherrill and Dennys Reyes. Would’ve been adding insult to injury if we tried to add any of those guys even in a platoon. Can’t rightly tell if it makes it hurt more to hear the Phillies bandied about as being in on Cliff Lee and Zack Greinke or if that’s just part of a push to make guys like me feel better about a team that really has no choice but to stand pat this offseason and hope things go a little differently in 2011.
Will say that the Nats being big spenders really warms my heart. Love that the Fish are being aggressive, too. The NL East doesn’t get enough credit for being the hornet’s nest it is.
Lastly, Selig really does need to expand the league to include the mystery team that gets cited any time talks heat up with a free agent. Craig Calcaterra has been writing about this over at Hardball Talk for a bit. The tweets coming out of Orlando have been positively hilarious. Have to say that the rumors definitely keep me engaged with baseball during what is otherwise a very slow offseason.