Heres the difference in the Phillies trading compared to the Indians trading however. The phillies are trading for stars, I mean look at their pitching rotation this year! As per the Indians, they trade stars away to get prospects. While back in the 90's this method worked wonders as they had Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome, and a few other big names come up through their farm system, it doesn't work for them anymore. I think that last big prospects we had received were from trading Bartolo Colon to the Montreal Expos (not the Washington Nationals) for Cliff Lee, Grady Sizemore and Brandon Phillips. The most irritating part there was we got rid of Phillips before he came out of the farm system and now he's a star down in Cinci.
Also an irritating part of the C.C. trade a few years back, we were just in the ALCS. We make it maybe 3/8's of the way through the season and are bombing horribly. Instead of thinking about a 2nd half comeback, we just say, "Ok, we're giving up and trading away our Ace." Same thing with the following year in trading Cliff Lee. While with All 3 star trades (Cliff, C.C, V-Mart) they were on the last years of their contracts, I'm more than confident they would have been willing to resign as a somewhat decent price had we won the series. Not too sure with C.C. considering the money NY was throwing at him. Which in another round about way makes me respect Cliff Lee even more then ever. We finally had a star player pretty much say...hmmm. Trying to think of a way to say it without getting in trouble....He pretty much told the Yankees "'Blank' You". I'm pretty sure you can fill in the blank with plenty of options. So nice to see the Yankees not get what they wanted for once.
And another round about....Thats another reason why Baseball might be my least favorite sport. The rules on the clubs and rosters are almost non-existent. Its essentially if you have the money, spend the money. Which is why the Yankees can buy the best team year in and year out. With all the post season appearances and extra income from those, they have unlimited funds. While in most sports theres something known as a Cap. Where they can only spend X amount of money each year in player salaries.I believe that starting a Salary Cap in baseball would really even out the playing field where there really would be no dominant team anymore.
And on a final topic before I go overboard lol, if you guys were to build your own fantasy team, taking in players from any era you really feel like. What would your team look like, Just a starting team, getting into backup/bench players would make for a long list lol? Mine would be...
C - Sandy Alomar Jr (still by far best catcher I've ever seen.)
1B - Jim Thome
2B - Robby Alomar
SS - Omar Vizquel
3B - Ryan Zimmerman
OF - Grady Sizemore
OF - Kenny Loften
OF - Manny Ramirez
DH - Albert Belle
SP - Randy Johnson
SP - Tom Glavine
SP - John Smoltz
SP - Greg Maddux (Lets face it, when the 95' Braves had Glavine, Smoltz, and Maddux, they deserved to beat the Indians in the World Series lol)
SP - Stephen Strasburg (Even though he's been set back with Tommy John Surgery, I believe with his youth he can easily still live up to the hype)
You can easily see I grew up on the Indians, especially in the 90's lol
