The Real Winners and Losers of the MLB Trade Deadline

The Five People who Still had Chris Shelton on their Fantasy Team – The Tigers finally put you out of your misery yesterday by sending Shelton to AAA. After an April to remember, Shelton had a May, June, and July to forget. And I’m sure there where a few people holding on and even starting Shelton because maybe he’ll start hitting home runs again… well he didn’t. And he won’t. Sean Casey (whose apparent goal in life is to play in every Rust Belt City in the world (Onwards to Liverpool!!!!)) takes over the job at the bag. So go out there and pick up Jason Tyner or something.

NFL WideOuts - Get those Zoolander quotes ready when it's time to play the Panthers! Because Male Model and Part Time D-Back Dante Wesley is going to be covering you...

The Reds and Reds fans – Not only does your team care about you (made obvious by their activity in the market over the last month), but they also get to say Rheal Cormier over the next few months. It’s not every day that a good name finds his way to a major league roster, but Rheal Cormier is a good name. So Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Reds fans, Rheal Cormier is going be pitching near a River near you soon.

Craig Wilson and Cory Lidle – Two middle of the road, average to bellow average players who now find themselves on the Yankees and, I guarantee, will all of a sudden turn into Tris Speaker and Walter Johnson and everyone in the sports media will be writing “OH MY GOSH!!” profiles of these two come September, then Kevin Kennedy will do his half, “well geeze”/half laugh thing while talking about these two to a hopefully preggers Jeanne Zelasko again this October. That was a long sentence, I know, but remember this happens every year with the Yankees from Bucky Dent, to Aaron Boone, to Aaron Small.

Craig Wilson and Sean Casey (again) – They went from the Pirates to the Yankees/Tigers respectively. I always feel happy for those few guys that go from ‘absolute crap team’ to a contender and you can tell they’re already asking practicing saying things like “What color turtlenecks to we wear under our unis again?” and “Jeter really is a great player” and “It’s just awesome to be apart of something like this.” I love reading those guys quotes come October. (Last year it was Geoff Blum).

My Buddy – Who just informed me: “Okay, I’m re-watching the first season of ‘Lost’ now and it was the episode where Boone dies/Aaron is born. And something strikes me. (If you didn’t know, the numbers [4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42] are all numbers of retired Yankees jerseys so thus Abrams (show's exec producer) could be a Yankees fan). But then I’m watching and Aaron is born... and Boone dies... Aaron Boone!”

How awesome is that? I love stuff like that.

The White Sox, A’s, and Yankees – The Twins, Angels, and Red Sox could have made deals to put some hurt into the Sox, A’s, and Yanks playoff hopes… but neither of them did. Now the Twins have to pray that they keep playing well and that they get their outfield back from injury soon. The Angels have to continue to find way to score runs with a lineup of guys who can’t get on base besides Vlad and Garret Anderson at times. And the Red Sox have to have great pitching from those young arms (or pray they can get Ortiz to bat in the 9th inning of every game)… All of a sudden, the White Sox and Yankees look like favorites to win the Wild Card and AL East and the A’s look like they won’t have to pray to hold on to the AL West.

Losers
The Mets - Oliver Perez? Are you serious? And you gave up Xavier Nady? What, did Steve Phillips gain control of the team for a few hours? Oliver Perez is a poor mans Javier Vazquez… strikes a lot of guys out, but allows ten runs in the process. Yuck. (and yes I just compared a Mexican to a Puerto Rican… hopefully that won’t get my ass kicked later today).

Andy the Clown – Because this guy still scares the shit out of me. I’m not sure if this guy was a sick, sick, man, but I get the feeling he was. That makes all White Sox fans between the ages of 55 and 25 scared for life, not only because of the absolute crap teams that we had to watch (the early 60s, 1977, and 1983 aside), but also because we probably saw this guy and shook his hand.

Baseball in DC – Classic save five bucks today to spend twenty bucks tomorrow by not trading Soriano. Why? Because they take headlines away from the Redskins as long as Soriano is around. So the Nats will still sort of matter come September because Alfonso will be making a run at being the first 50/50 player in history (Jim “Drunk Again” Bowden’s words, not mine). We can only be in 98% Redskins mode here in DC because of Soriano… but seriously, if you’ve seen the Nats, you’d realize that this team is going no where and their farm system is probably the worst in baseball. So why keep Soriano? I mean, in 2010 when the Nats still stink, will anyone look back and say, “I’m glad they kep Soriano for those two months!” Of course not because they’ll be too busy trying to figure out how to clone Joe Gibbs.

NFL Beat Writers that Want Us to Care about Training Camp – Don’t you think they hate the MLB trade deadline? There they are, out in the Middle-of-No-Where, Wisconsin or WeHateEveryone, Mississippi or 40MilesFromI95!NO!!!, Pennsylvania covering training camp of NFL teams that are still six or seven weeks from actually playing football. Training camp is always boring, but they sell us on it being important because of things like “Benson likes contact” or “The rookies sing their college fight songs tonite!” stories, which actually don’t matter. And unlike baseball, there are rarely good pranks (This still is the greatest prank of all time… pulled off by baseball players of course). So it ends up being over sensational stories about nothing. It’s as if women took control of their minds and started writing about football. And the worst offender of this? Len Pasquarelli. Whenever I hear about the sports writer that hates sports but loves the free food buffet, I think of Len Pasquarelli who has never, ever praised a personal move by any team not named the Atlanta Falcons.

Lebanon – Talk about getting screwed over… Israel backed out of a Cease Fire deal yesterday and continues to bomb the crap out of the poor country. In fact, they decided to ‘step things up’ a bit today. Awesome. So I dedicate this song for you, good people of Lebanon: Holland, 1945.