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You couldn't have put all that in the shout queue. It's text limited. I had to lop off a sentence. They're trying to encourage you to keep the shouts short. ;) The bane of my existence...
I don't care much about Beckett's issues with the clubhouse over there. That was a group thing. It's not like he was a horrible influence during their latest title, or Schilling or others (*cough* Randy) who could rub folks the wrong way couldn't also get rings.
Beckett comes here to be the #2. That helps - there's a pecking order, and he's not bigger than The King. And I agree, we'd be parting with one of the big three. I don't care much about that either. We have Felix through 2014. Beckett is signed through 2014. A-Gone would be the missing piece of the offense.
We'd get two legit shots at a ring with Felix, and potentially the chance to re-sign him, all because we paid actual money for ballplayers who could help us. When you give up Pedro for scrap-metal or Shin-soo Choo for a speed bump, it sucks. When you trade Bosio for RJ or Travis Lee for Curt Schilling, what do you care how Bosio is pitching or Lee is for his new team?
You can trade a good player for a great player and come out ahead. Always get the best player in any deal. A-Gone is the best player, and (essentially) we'd be signing Beckett to a 2 year/ $30 million deal this offseason would be a short-term shot at lightning. The Angels are paying 2/29 for Haren (w/ buyout) and he was great for a year and bad the year after. But then as with Beckett it's DONE if they want it to be. We're not taking back some 6 year Zito deal.
The guy with the long-term deal is the MOTO hitter at the position we desperately need to fill and have no minor-league solution to. Just pretend Paxton threw his elbow to the backstop if it makes you feel better, and we signed one Beckett instead of two Vargases to fill the gap.
Baltimore's been waiting FIVE YEARS for a certain Chris Tillman to make his mark at the ML level, and he was about a year behind where Paxton and Walker are now at the time of the deal. You wanna wait til 2018, when Felix is gone, to see Paxton crack a 4 ERA in the bigs? We could. He might never do it.
I say this as a huge Paxton fan (he's my favorite of the Big Three). If he could get me A-Gone I would strap concrete shoes to him and throw him overboard. Erasmo, Beavan, Hultzen, Walker, the #15ish pick in the upcoming draft, and whomever else can fill the starting rotation spots - whatever's left after Felix/Beckett/Iwakuma, anyway.
Getting some 6th inning leads to our monster-in-the-making bullen is the key, as we've seen recently, and A-Gone helps us in a significant way with that. Paying his 20 mil contract is the price of doing business. We were willing to trade 6 prospects to get him 18 months ago, I'd be fine with giving up one or two to get him now. That's quite a drop in prospect price.
~G