Before you bunch your undies and scream to the heavens that Jim Hendry could have waited a week and gotten Aaron Boone for one good minor league pitcher, consider that a) it’s not true, b) how did your undies get bunched? Yikes.

Boone to the Yankees.
Ventura to the Dodgers.
Jim Bowden to the hair salon.
Sidney Ponson to Livan Hernandez’s old Giants uniform (it’s big enough, right?)

Deadline day came and went with these the big trades announced so far. I say so far because sometimes the paperwork is slow and a trade or two trickles in late. Plus, given baseball’s current economic climate, more and more players actually clear waivers in the August 1-31 period because teams are afraid to block, for fear of getting stuck with an expensive guy they don’t want.

In fact, the San Diego Padres just got done paying Randy Myers several million dollars a year to effectively have him coach women’s basketball in Washington state. Oops.

Let’s look at the trades from yesterday and today and just snark away.

Cubs trade minor leaguer Jason Fransz to the Rangers for whatever is left of Doug Glanville.
Every year a Cubs general manager makes a superflous trade. Let’s hope this one is Jim Hendry’s. Glanville is basically the righthanded version of Tom Goodwin, only without the blinding speed. He’s a good guy, a good defensive outfielder (albeit with a pop gun arm) and no threat at all in the batter’s box. Check that. He’s a threat…to the Cubs. I shudder to think what happens when Goodwin comes off the DL. Does Dusty dare start a Glanville-Lofton-Goodwin outfield some day? Yikes.

Reds trade Jose Guillen to the A’s for pitchers Joe Valentin and Aaron Harang.
Guillen is in the middle of his “hey, remember when Jose Guillen had that one flukey good year” year. The A’s are hoping that a change of leagues won’t derail that. But it might. They are giving up a pair of good young arms in Harang and Valentine. Valentine is a product of the White Sox organization, which means that in the next 90 days his labrum will fall off.

Reds trade Aaron Boone to the Yankees for pitchers Brandon Claussen and Charlie Manning and some cash. Not Dave Cash, or Norm Cash, but their Korean half-brother Sum Cash.

The Reds basically decided last night that after trading away his brother and firing his dad, they were done insulting Aaron and would find a new home for him. They wanted him out of the National League and surely, out of the NL Central and the Yankees were standing there with two (likely) overrated Yankees pitching prospects and so Aaron is a Yankee. He’s the kind of guy Joe Torre loves. He can play second or third, he’s a good offensive player, a good defensive player and unlike Aramis Ramirez he plays as though he has an actual pulse. I say that the Yankees pitching prospects are overrated just because they’re Yankees pitching prospects. New York teams are great at overhyping their farm system kids and then dumping them on saps like the Reds.

This trade caused this trade:

Yankees trade Robin Ventura to the Dodgers for minor league outfielder Bubba Crosby and minor league pitcher Scott Proctor
Dan Evans is insane. The more he makes moves the more you realize that the White Sox didn’t make a mistake by keeping Kenny Williams instead of Dan. Robin Ventura? What, Ken Reitz wasn’t available. Look, I like Robin Ventura. He seems like a nice guy. But the Dodgers aren’t going to make the playoffs and what do they need with a 36-year old third baseman? Does Fred McGriff need somebody to go to Sizzler with for the early bird special? I wonder if Rickey Henderson will remember he played with Robin on the Mets?

Look, I have never heard of Bing Crosby’s illegitimate son Bubba or the other guy, so it’s likely they’re not giving up much of value here. But why bother?

The Red Sox traded minor league infielder Freddy Sanchez and pitcher Mike Gonzalez to the Pirates for former Red Sox Jeff Suppan (a few years ago) and Brandon Lyon (a few days ago). Couple this with the announcement that Bobby Hill is the player to be named later in the E-ramis and Lofton trade and the Pirates have a new double play combo of the future in Sanchez and Hill. It’s not exactly Soriano and Jeter, but it ain’t Abraham Nunez and Jack Wilson, either.

The Red Sox get back a starter who has finally learned how to pitch and a reliever who the Pirates thought was damaged goods. When the Pirates complained that Lyon’s MRI was a mess, boy-genius Theo Epstein said, “It’s the cleanest of any of our pitchers.” I fear for the health of the BoSox pitching staff.

The Kansas City Royals trade Sum Cash (boy, he gets around) to ESPN Radio 1000 for lisping baseball expert Bruce Levine.
The best part, Levine still hasn’t gotten the scoop on it. Oh, wait…no the trade was Sum Cash to the Devil Rays for lefty reliever Al Levine. Oops. The same Al Levine with the 2.90 ERA who the Cardinals couldn’t use. Muahahahahahahahaha!

But the winner on the day had to be the San Francisco Giants getting Sidney Ponson from the Orioles for mediocre lefty Damian Moss, good young pitcher Kurt Ainsworth and that pederast Hannaman…(oops, Fletch flashback), minor league pitcher Ryan Hannaman.

Pitchers with sub 4.00 ERAs and 14 wins through July don’t fall from trees, even fat ones like Sidney. This is a great trade for the Giants, who always seem to make one trade that really helps them every July. In my mind Ainsworth could be a very good pitcher some day, but could is the big word and it’s no reason not to make this deal.

The Orioles take a flyer on Moss, who ought to be better than he’s been so far this year, and get two other pitchers. So this is a pretty good deal for them too.

And that’s how we like it. We like everybody to be happy. That’s just the way we are here at Desipio!

How about a hug?

I’m sure there is a trade or two that haven’t been announced yet, or that I’ve missed. But I’m sure we’ll get to it down here in our handy discussion section.

Now…about that hug…