M's notes

[stellarspartan]

Ever since Cliff Lee made his debut for the M's on April 30, and when they've been completely out of the race (they haven't been able to pick up any games on the first place Rangers; they've won 10 in a row), I've been a big advocate of giving him a dozen starts or so, padding his already-high value, and trading him for all he's worth. I have the firm belief that we can get much more than the 2 compensation draft picks we'd receive if he signed elsewhere as a free agent. The Twins are the big possibility; they have a great catching prospect of whom I can't remember his name, and with them haveing signed Joe Mauer through 2018 the end of time, their chances of bringing what's-his-face into the Majors to be a starter is slim to none. If I were part of the Twins' front office, this would be my thought process: why keep a top prospect toiling in the minors or on the bench as a backup to the game's best catcher when we can trade him and a couple other dudes for the best pitcher in the majors for the rest of the season? So...my point is, I've always felt that the M's of last year were an abomination, and had very little chance of competing this year. They over-achieved last year, and if they'd played the way they were supposed to they would have been a .500 club. This year they've regressed majorly. Not only are they playing worse than last year, but they're underachieving. Which leads us to our 11-games under .500 record and a -58 run differential.

(Side note: do you realize that if we hadn't been good the last week of 2008, we could have a Lee-Felix-Strasburg-Fister-Vargas rotation and not have to deal with the Hyphen-Snell disaster every fifth day? Not fair!)

However, after watching SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight last night (I didn't have a disc of "The Shield" to watch), I have decided that I don't want to trade Cliff because they're actually paying attention to the Mariners. Once he's gone, we'll be back to being an afterthought. And I, for one, don't like being ignored.