UPDATE: Cards Acquire Holliday, page 26

[JackofDiamonds]

Did I miss the Wallace/not selling jeans jokes in the pages I skipped or is that still fair game?

The floor is yours.

[MrCrowesGarden]

Tom Ackerman's Twitter says Holliday batting cleanup tonight.

[planet planet]

I wonder which channel will carry his introduction at 4:00? I want to record it.

[Hungary Jack]

Holy crap. I've been at shop all day. I heard an ESPN report this morning that a deal involving Wallace, Robinson and Mort was near, but I figured it was hoo-haa.

What has gotten into Moz?

[JackofDiamonds]

Holy crap. I've been at shop all day. I heard an ESPN report this morning that a deal involving Wallace, Robinson and Mort was near, but I figured it was hoo-haa.

What has gotten into Moz?

[/youtube]

[Jake]

I haven't read everything in this thread, but you guys don't think Wallace was too much to give up ?

[omaha_red]

rosenthal

[Michael]

From Neyer:

*snip*

If the A's made a trade like this two years ago, I would have organized a parade to celebrate Billy Beane's great wisdom.

Today? I just can't do it. Instead of seeing three prospects obtained for a song, I wonder why the A's would want a "pear-shaped" third baseman who doesn't have much power and is widely thought to be a future first baseman, and I think about what a disaster Oakland's last first-baseman-of-the-future (Daric Barton) has been. Instead of applauding Beane for adding to the organization's pitching depth, I wonder what the A's -- who already have eight starting pitchers 25 or younger -- could possibly do with another young starter. And I wonder how Peterson's going to succeed where Ryan Sweeney and Travis Buck and Aaron Cunningham haven't.

Before I can regain my faith in Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics, they're going to need to find a real third baseman, and perhaps a young shortstop who can hit, and they're going to need to actually develop a young hitter.

Before I can regain my faith in Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics, they're going to need to start winning baseball games again.

Full Story

[omaha_red]

From Neyer:

*snip*

If the A's made a trade like this two years ago, I would have organized a parade to celebrate Billy Beane's great wisdom.

Today? I just can't do it. Instead of seeing three prospects obtained for a song, I wonder why the A's would want a "pear-shaped" third baseman who doesn't have much power and is widely thought to be a future first baseman, and I think about what a disaster Oakland's last first-baseman-of-the-future (Daric Barton) has been. Instead of applauding Beane for adding to the organization's pitching depth, I wonder what the A's -- who already have eight starting pitchers 25 or younger -- could possibly do with another young starter. And I wonder how Peterson's going to succeed where Ryan Sweeney and Travis Buck and Aaron Cunningham haven't.

Before I can regain my faith in Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics, they're going to need to find a real third baseman, and perhaps a young shortstop who can hit, and they're going to need to actually develop a young hitter.

Before I can regain my faith in Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics, they're going to need to start winning baseball games again.

Full Story

good points actually.. sure he pulls off great deals.. but they haven't exactly had
a great run at it lately..

[Fat Strat]

I guess I'll weigh in (30 pages later...)

I really like the deal. Basically, skmsw's take today is mine as well. Moving Wallace for an impact player like Holliday makes a lot of sense. Clearly they didn't have a lot of confidence that his glove would stick at 3rd. That makes him a blue chip trade prospect, and you save those up for big time, impact players. Holliday is just that.

I think that some people could say that we overpaid for him by including Peterson and Mortensen. Personally, I don't see it. You very rarely see a single prospect traded for a high-end MLB talent trade, and Wallace definitely has his warts (to go along with a lot of positives). Peterson is extremely expendable. Mortensen really isn't a tough loss for the club. With guys like Todd, Garcia, Boggs, Lynn, Samuel, and others we have a decent crop of future rotation/pen fillers going forward.

Would I prefer that we keep Mortensen? Absolutely, but he's not worth enough to make me back out of this deal.

Mo has shown that he can be aggressive when the right situations present themselves. We're in first place. We have the pitching to stay there and compete well in the postseason. We had a minor league system bursting with mediocrity that could be moved for real talent. We had obvious needs at the MLB level.

He met those needs and put us in position to win this year, and either rebuild the farm system in one offseason (DeRosa and Holliday would be Type A's, correct?) or pour the cash we've saved the last few years after cutting payroll into resigning both of them and letting our FA's walk. Financially, we would be adding payroll, but probably just get us back to where we should be $110 million.

I prefer the second option, resigning both DeRosa and Holliday and setting the club up for 3 years of WS caliber play in StL.