Wake Up Mr Minaya, the Season's Passing You By

I read the morning's baseball deal headlines and I have to admit, I'm beginning to get a little pissed off.

Is Omar Minaya awake out there? Trades to be made he's nowhere to be found and when he DOES make a trade, he embarasses himself.

Let's take the Tigers getting Cabrera and D-Train for what amounts to a few coupons from the National Food Allotment Program.

Seriously, in return for an All-Star third baseman and a proven ace, the Marlins received only a young lefty who was 5-5 with a 5.63 ERA last season (the Mets don't have an equivilent?), a third string catcher (We CERTAINLY have a third string catcher by now), a talented but unproven CF (we have two of them in waiting) and ok, a host of other very low level names with alleged upside...what did the Marlins get in return that Omar couldn't have easily given???

Ok, I hear you saying oh, we don't need the best hitting fattest third baseman in the National League we've already got David Wright.

Agreed, Cabrera can't and doesn't need to play third base. He might be able to play first base even if Carlos Delgado is still there taking up space or he might even be converted to right field. Or NONE Of the above and he's recycled as trade bait to the Angels or the Rangers or some other AL team he can DH with for a few good, young prospects maybe even ANOTHER starting pitcher or bullpen help... Point is, you're then dealing from a position of strength.

And D-Train? We don't need a front end starter like D-Train in our rotation? One bad season and we've soured on him already? We haven't presumed over the last three years that D-Train was inevitably going to nd up pitching at Shea in the auld orange and blue someday? This stings even worse than missing out on another Marlins fire sale.

So if you're a Tiger fan you must have shit the bed when you heard this. That's because Dave Dombrowski is the Tigers GM, a guy who shows year after year he can make the deals, a guy who doesn't humiliate himself by trading top young prospects for a pair of middle of the road muppets who will have no positive impact on the season.

And if you're a Mets fan your fucked because Omar is your GM and your top bargaining chip is already in a Nats uniform and the best you can come up with are sickly conjectures on signing the likes of dead-arm, Bartolo Colon who and pray for a Comeback Player of the Year award. Or signing Hiroki Kuroda, some Japanese mystery pitcher as what, the next Masato Yoshii or some similar arse-end-of-the-rotation afterthought?? Or how about reviving speculation on Livian Hernandez and Jose Contreras as a means of jump-starting our offseason anticipation?

Fat fucking chance.

Instead I'm starting to get this nauseous feeling that the Red Sox will get Johan Santana, the Yankees will scoop up half the A's rotation in reply, and Erik Bedard will end up on the Dodgers or some other National League rival whilst Omar will be sizing up the likes of Anthony Reyes as another hopeless reclamation project for the Guru Formerly Known As Rick Peterson (let's not forget he's only a few inches from the broom as well these days...)

I don't know. It's just demoralising picking up the paper (or firing up the baseball rumour google mill) and finding out SOMEBODY ELSE has made the blockbuster trade, SOMEONE ELSE'S GM HAD THE INITIATIVE and two more star players are off the market.

The clock is ticking Omar and a failure to make a good, decisive move to give us some hope for the season will be a ticking bomb waiting to explode.