“If your opponent asks for the moon, you counteroffer with cheese.”

Start with a Francis-like extension of 4 years $12 million and end somewhere close to Cook’s 3 years $30 million.

to live by Rich Harden, and die by him too.

Do either Eric Bedard or John Smoltz strike your fancy?

He’s just such an electric pitcher, I don’t want him to go. He brings something to the rotation we just don’t have outside of Ubaldo, and that’s the big Whiff potential

what does that say about Christian Colonel?

If JDLR would have more value than Hawpe at the deadline – I suppose the possible trade-market could further fine-tune this but do pitchers always have more value than hitters at the deadline?

Also, do teams always get a better return on a player if they trade him before the season as opposed to the deadline?
Sometimes I feel like teams are more likely to hit the panic button and give up more in deadline deals (maybe not quantity, but quality)- particularly if the GM is in his last year of a contract or something.

A central question is how do other teams view our players – because that really can determine if we should try to trade them now or trade them later.

I don’t necessarily believe that trading the player earlier always gets a higher return. It’s somewhat counter-intuitive because you’d imagine a team would be willing to give up more for a season of Brad Hawpe as opposed to two months. If I remember what the literature on decision-making says, it’s just simply that during times of crisis (crisis can be defined liberally), people become more risk-taking, but otherwise we’re pretty risk-averse. So a team might be more willing to get a deal done in season if their star player just got injured, or similarly a big player on a division rival just got injured. Whereas before the season, unless there’s a clear need for a player, teams may have less reason to try to target a player, which goes back to my first point of how do other teams view our players? I get the impression that other teams aren’t too high on JDLR and Hawpe (both of them are very risky, and the offseason isn’t usually a time of crisis), similarly, if other teams are aware that JDLR will price himself out of CO and that we have a ton of OF depth and don’t need Hawpe, we have no leverage.

CC and Lee aren’t just anyone, and Brad Hawpe isn’t on their level.

But, didn’t the Dodgers give up a really good prospect for Casey Blake? I mean, I know Blake has like the best beard in all of baseball but he’s not that great of a player…

I simply don’t see our upcoming arms matching Jorge’s impact in the next 2 years.

All in due time, I hope.

to damage our chances at winning both short-term and long-term.

Kinsler is a top talent who’s signed at a reasonable price through 2013 (aka his prime years).

He’d look so good in purple and black though. Bummer.