Tougher call, but I guess Corpas – at least he’s healthy. And it really looks like Fuentes is getting dealt and Corpas is going to get another shot at closing, in no small part b/c of the recent contract he signed.

Do you think he secretly wants to play elsewhere? Or is that nonsense?

Ya I don’t know why Beane couldn’t get more – maybe this “dead arm” period means he felt he better sell Harden now or it’ll be too late by the time his next start rolls around. And I hear ya about the A’s having a better run differential than the Angels. However, they’ve ran out some pretty pathetic lineups, and Duchsherer will come back to earth, Lackey missed the first six weeks, no way they can win the wild card, etc. They just dealt Swisher and Haren, so I applaud him sticking to the rebuild plan. However, the execution was highly questionable, b/c as you say, they already have 5 better SP prospects than Gallagher. It’s clear the organization likes him a lot more than the common view of him as a prospect.

Favre is basically to Packers fans what Nelson Mandela is to the Xhosa people. He’s entitled to a little pensiveness in the twilight of his career, no one here cares much about the retirement “saga”–that is mostly manufactured drama courtesy of the Eastern Seaboard Programming Network anyway. Getting all up in people’s shit over private decisions and relentlessly hounding them is NOT a Midwestern trait, that’s straight London tabloid (or ESPN, of course). I suspect most Wisconsinites would frankly have no problem with cutting Aaron Rodgers outright AND firing Ted Thompson for even one more year of Favre. I think he’ll eventually be an ok QB, but if it comes down to it, fuck Rodgers, we have Brohm anyway. Fuck Thompson, he’s made some nice moves, but his treatment of Favre, whatever their differences, is shitty, and if he wants to force a “pick me or him” scenario, well, don’t let the doorknob hit you in the ass on the way out, Ted. I hear Wolf may be contemplating a return to the front office. And I can’t see why real football fans wouldn’t want the guy around, I really can’t. This isn’t Jordan or Magic or Reggie White coming back from real retirement, years later. Favre was playing in January. He has had his own offseason program for years, he could easily be exactly where he was last season at this time. He plays hard, he’s undeniably fun to watch, and apart from maybe Javon Walker (who subsequent events have shown to be one of the shadier operators in the league), you’re not going to find anyone, coach, teammate or opponent, with a bad word about the man. I suspect you’re letting the coverage of him, which he can’t help, affect your impressions of him. It’s not his fault that ESPN are a bunch of dullards completely incapable of finding another story. He can’t help Madden’s slavish man-love, any more than he can make the grass to grow, or the sun to shine. As a player, he’s a net asset to the NFL (arguably it’s single greatest asset, for over a decade now), and watching him play is a fine way to waste three hours on an autumn afternoon.

Re: Harden. Wow. It’s a fucking horrible deal for the A’s. Beane is entitled to a certain degree of trust, but it’s obvious they could have gotten far more, all they had to do was wait a week or two. That’s it. He is not even a FA, he has a $7M option for next year. Scott freakin’ Linebrink makes about $5M a year, as do a host of middle relievers. To put it simply, Harden could make at least three 15-day DL trips over the course of 2009 and still be worth more than that.

So what was the freaking rush? The deadline isn’t up. Having lived in Chicago for a while now and having seen plenty of him, my impression of Patterson is that he sucks, and will be lucky to be a league regular. He can’t play OF to save his life right now so I hope they’re serious about him at 2b. Gallagher might–might–make an adequate 3rd or 4th real-life starter some day, and while Murton is better than the Cubs’ treatment of him would have one believe, the fact of the matter is that they have destroyed his value by yanking him around for years, and thus acquiring him is no longer any feat, he’s just filler. As for this catcher no one has ever heard of, I am reading that he was laying an epic turd this season and held in little regard by anyone.

They easily could have gotten a premium prospect. As a Brewers fan, I would totally have been on board with Gamel for Harden. Given the Wang situation and the hugeness of the egos involved, you can bet Little Stein just blew a gasket, I’m sure he would have surrendered far more from a much better system. The Rays? Dodgers? Phils? Cards? Friggin’ Detroit (although about the same class of system)? The take seems so low, it’s not even worth bothering with. With FDLS/Gonzalez/Anderson/Cahill/Inoa, why do the A’s even want a possible back-of-the-rotation guy like Gallagher anyway? They are right in the friggin’ race, and their run differential is like 3-4 TIMES better than the Angels. If no one else stepped forward with a real offer, why not just ride the tiger and see what happens? If he falls apart, well, big deal–your “loss” is Gallagher and Patterson. So what? If he stays healthy, shit, maybe they go to the playoffs. Maybe he finishes in the top-3 in Cy Young balloting and they DO get a real trade offer. Even if they never dealt him, if they got even one compensatory pick, why couldn’t the A’s scouts do better with that pick than Gallagher/Patterson? Why not roll the dice, if the stakes are so low?

And I thought the same thing, DDD. He must have an MRI result in his desk drawer showing Harden’s labrum is down to like 5% structural integrity. It’s the only thing that makes sense. If his arm doesn’t fall off before the trade deadline, though, I cannot help think he did his team a big disservice with this one. Anyway, for as long as they held onto the guy, and as much as they babied him, they sure gave him away for a song in the end, and without a fight at that. Lame as hell, Beane.