New Dodgers

The Dodgers just traded for Greg Maddux and Julio Lugo.

For one thing, we do seem to have quite a large collection of former Braves these days...

From a baseball standpoint, my feelings are mixed. While Maddux is nowhere close to what he used to be, getting him only cost us Cesar Izturis, who no longer has a starting position on the team (once Jeff Kent comes back from his injury). We didn't trade any prospects to get Maddux, so this is a good trade simply because we traded entirely from surplus. From a personal standpoint (i.e., one that has nothing to do with whether the trade improves the team), Greg Maddux has been one of my favorite players for a very long time. He is an artist on the mound and is an absolute pleasure to watch (and was especially awesome to watch in his prime). I am thus very happy about this trade.

I'm a little confused about the trade for Julio Lugo, which cost us prospects Joel Guzman and Sergio Pedroza. I don't know anything about Pedroza, but I'm not worried about the loss of Guzman. He was once highly touted, but his star has seriously fallen and he has fallen way down our prospect depth chart. (My understanding is that the Dodgers came to consider him a stiff and wanted to get rid of him before the rest of the teams also realized he's a stiff.) The thing that confuses me here is that Lugo is now going to take the role that Izturis had: he'll play second while Kent is injured and then will be a sort of super-utility guy. I can't see him remaining with the Dodgers after this year. (I think he becomes a free agent after the year.) It is true that he is better for this role than Izturis, if for no other reason than he's a much better bat off the bench, but while I don't think we lost much with this trade, would we really be better off with Lugo on the roster than one of our younger guys? (For that matter, why are we still clogging up a roster spot with Sandy Alomar, Jr., who has had something like 5 plate appearances ever since we acquirec catcher Toby Hall. Hmmm... this is our third trade with the Devil Rays since the end of the 2005 season.)

A couple days ago, the Dodgers traded Dannys Baez and Willy Aybar to the Braves for Wilson Betemit. Personally, I think Aybar is about as good a prospect as is Betemit (probably because plate disciplines is one of my turn-ons), so hopefully this is one of those situations where their assessment is better than mine. To be sure, Betemit is an excellent prospect, but I just don't see him as a better prospect than the guy we used in the trade.

All of this notwithstanding, we didn't really lose anything from our farm system, which is still extraordinarily deep. I'm not sure how this year will pan out, but our prospects for 2007 and beyond are extremely bright (where are my shades?) and it will certainly be fun watching Greg Maddux pitch on a regular basis.

Update: It fell under my radar, but it's been pointed out to me that we traded Sandy Alomar Jr already. I looked this up, and indeed on 7/23 we sent him to the White Sox for a minor league pitcher. Clearly, I am not paying enough attention to baseball...