Pretty brutal to see the level of vitriol you guys are launching at this trade. As someone who had no idea who Gonzales was before this morning, I trust G and Matt implicitly. Looks like a bad trade, no doubt about it.
Some thoughts, in the interest of kicking the can down the road a bit:
-As Doc is fond of saying, either the GM is an idiot, literally less smart than us, or he knows something we don't. This is the first trade that Jerry has made that seemed braindead to me, so I'm hoping whatever his inside information is, it's really solid. Cuz this looks reeeal bad from the outside.
-Probably my least favorite part of the trade is that, even if Jerry was convinced Tank had "trouble with the curve" and was doomed, that doesn't mean you sell low on him. His value has basically peaked now, and there should have been someone who thought he really was a #3 org prospect, 40% chance at a MOTO hitter. Find that GM, and sell to HIM. Jerry's insistence on getting "his guy" appears to have caused him to trade down, as G said elsewhere.
-Maybe the template really is left-handed Andrew Moore? I hear he has a good change-up, we can infer he was good pitchability (why else would Jerry want him?), and since he's left-handed it's okay that his FB is a couple ticks below Moore's. And even if he's Jason Vargas, there's nothing wrong with being Jason Vargas. Six cheap years of a durable league-average starter is quite valuable, in a distinctly boring kind of way. Jason's got 3.5 WAR and an All-Star game this year, so there's upside in the template... yeah okay, I'm not really buying that either.
So I guess, file this one under "He'd better be right." It's not like this trade can't work. Tank just needs to flame out, and Marco needs to settle somewhere in between Moore and Vargas, fairly quickly. If that happens, hey, we've raised the floor a good deal above Bergman.
What hurts the most is this this appears to preclude any deal for a TOR. I liked the Phelps deal specifically because it kept the powder (see, Tank) dry. So much for that. I hope Felix and Gallardo are the rotation upgrades we needed... sigh...