(The following is adapted from Senator Joseph McCarthy's famous Red Scare speech in Wheeling, West Virginia from February 9, 1950. I wouldn't want any of you to think I was trying to pass someone else's work off as my own. Wink.)

Ladies and gentlemen, today as we celebrate the one hundredth birthday of one of the greatest men in American history, I would like to be able to talk about what a glorious day today is in the history of the world. As we celebrate the birth of this man who with his whole heart and soul hated corruption, I would like to be able to speak of ethics in our time—of dirty pool being outlawed—and of world-wide honesty. These would be truly appropriate things to be able to mention as we celebrate the birthday of Richard M. Nixon.

Ten years after winning the war on PEDs, men’s hearts should anticipate a long peace—and men’s minds should be free from the heavy weight that comes with war. But this is not such a period—for this is not a period of peace. This is a time of “the cold war.” This is a time when all the world is split into two vast, increasingly hostile camps.

And by ten things to get excited about, I naturally mean ten baseball things to get excited by 2013. Otherwise the list would be full of things like "surviving the winter without contracting the black death" and "awaiting Fast and Furious 6."

That said, with winter still gripping us and baseball season still oh so far away, what are the things that will keep us getting out of the bed in the morning? 

Not that you asked, but for the fourth year in a row (2010, 2011, 2012), here's my up or down on every player eligible for the BBWAA Hall of Fame vote on this winter's ballot. I've decided to ignore the ten-name limit, which is becoming increasingly ridiculous; I'll make my imaginary cuts at the end. 

Sandy Alomar, Jr.: No. A Rookie of the Year and six-time All Star, but he just couldn't ever stay in the lineup; even removing the three bookend seasons in which he totaled 16 games played, Alomar averaged only 80 games. His 1997 is particularly memorable: he played 125 games and amassed 480 plate appearances, hitting .324/.354/.545 (128 OPS+) and setting career highs in HR (21), RBI (83), 2B (37) and wins above replacement (three). The season also included a 30-game hitting streak.

Jeff Bagwell: Yes. Of course. Thirty or 40 years from now, people are going to be saying to each other, "did you know it took Jeff Bagwell three [or more likely four or five or eight] tries to get into the Hall of Fame? THE Jeff Bagwell!" the way they might for Harmon Killebrew nowadays. It's just so obvious that not only does he belong in, but whatever "inner-circle" means to you, Bagwell is almost certainly that.

Craig Biggio: Yes. No doubt. The more interesting thing is that he's probably somewhere around the eighth or ninth most deserving candidate, but is the only remotely deserving candidate who seems to have any shot of getting in this time around, solely because he didn't hit a ton of home runs (there are lots of other reasons to shakily suspect him of cheating, if you're in to that sort of thing, but no one seems interested in those). 

Barry Bonds: Yes. Those same Bagwell people 30 or 40 years hence: "can you even believe what Bonds did in 2004? Can you believe that some of those idiots thought their embarrassingly primitive brand of medical science was capable of creating that sort of greatness out of thin air?"

Jeff Cirillo: No. Really very good from 1995-'99 with Milwaukee. It might be a stretch to conclude that Coors Field ruined him, but his bat certainly did take a turn for the worse right aruond the time he made the move to Denver, and was never qutie the same again. He was my wife's favorite during his two years in Seattle (we were living there at the time), because pretty.

Royce Clayton: No. I'd put his IMDB page in the Hall of Fame, though.

Roger Clemens: Yes. Arguably the best pitcher  who ever pitched. There is nothing else you can possibly say about him that I'm going to care about.

Jeff Conine: No. Sadly, "Mr. Marlin" is now just seventh among franchise position players in wins above replacement, close enough to be considered tied with #6 Mike Lowell and #8 Gary Sheffield and at less than half of Hanley Ramirez. Giancarlo Stanton will pass him by like next May.

Steve Finley: No. He shares a birthday with me, Darryl Strawberry and Dale Murphy, and Finley, just like the rest of us, was very good, but not that good or for quite that long. He was essentially two players -- the on-base, defense and steals guy of his pre-thirty years and the power-only guy of his post-thirties. If he could ever have been both at the same time, that would've been amazingly fun to watch. 

Julio Franco: No. I so wish I could say yes, and if it were one of those years where I couldn't find ten guys to vote for, I'd tack him on the end. Not this year, though. His weird and wonderful career should have a prominent place somewhere in the "and Museum" part of the building.

Shawn Green: No. Green had a Hall of Fame five-year peak -- .288/.369/.545 while averaging nearly 40 homers and over 20 steals a year -- but he did nothing before age 25, and very little after 30. Green had the fourteenth four-homer game in big league history; it came three weeks after Mike Cameron had the thirteenth, and it's only been done twice in the 10.5 seasons since.

Roberto Hernandez: No. Hernandez was a great closer for about ten years and a good short reliever for many more, but there are like five or six levels of closerdom before you get to the three or four of them that might make Bill's private Hall.

Ryan Klesko: No, but if you'd like to be convinced, check out his brochure!

Kenny Lofton: Yes. I wrote up Lofton's case here, and it's one of relatively few things from nearly three years ago I'm not ashamed to share. Basically: if you're pro-Raines, as most of you are, it's hard to justify not also being pro-Lofton. 

Edgar Martinez: Yes. Hell yes. Yes many times. Just an incredibly dominant, underrated hitter, for a surprisingly long time. Edgar was basically in peak form for fourteen years; what he doesn't have is the extra five or six years on either side to pad his counting stats. I don't care about those as much.

Don Mattingly: No. You could say a lot of the same things about him that I did about Shawn Green, but people seem to remember the two quite differently. (Donnie Baseball was better, please don't send letters. But there are certain similarities.)

Fred McGriff: No. Close. I figure he'll make it in some day via some version of the Veterans' Committee, and I certainly won't be upset about it. 

Mark McGwire: Yes. I hate what has happened to McGwire, but I'm grateful at least that he puts the lie to any notion that it's the players' deceit or lack of accountability, or anything other than "drugs are bad, m'kay," behind all the moralistic PED madness. Dude apologized. Things got even worse.

Jose Mesa: No. On every ballot, there must be a Jose Mesa. Though last year's Jose Mesa was Terry Mulholland, and that might be worse. Mesa threw 984 innings in relief and only 565 as a starter, yet ended up with a perfectly average 100 ERA+.

Jack Morris: No. So talked out on this. I no longer think his induction is quite so inevitable, but here was my concession speech about a year ago. From back when Blyleven vs. Morris was a thing, I'm still kind of proud of this.

Dale Murphy: No. He comes very close, and it wouldn't bother me at all if he got in. But he won't, which is puzzling; I don't understand why anyone who would vote for Jim Rice or Andre Dawson wouldn't also vote for Murphy. But anyway, I wouldn't have voted for any of the three.

Rafael Palmeiro: Yes. I don't know if it's because the field is too crowded or people really hate liars or what, but every now and then someone will try to say that Palmeiro might not deserve to get in even if you don't count the PEDs or the lying against him. Which, no. Just no. Try to seriously make that argument, and then go look at a list of Hall of Famers and see how many you'd have to kick out for the same reasons. Palmeiro should be in.

Mike Piazza: Yes. Because I don't trust any of the attempts to measure catcher defense at all (especially not from before the last two or three seasons), I still think there's a pretty solid chance Piazza was the greatest catcher in MLB history. 

Tim Raines: Yes. Just read this.

Reggie Sanders: No. But he was much better than you probably remember. He did everything there is to do in the strike-shortened 1995 season: batted over .300, hit 28 homers, stole 36 bases, drew 69 walks, played brilliant defense in right and center fields. Awesomely talented all-around player who is probably better remembered for playing for eight different teams over his final ten seasons.

Curt Schilling: Yes. Look, I don't like him any more than you do (or maybe you like him, in which case I like him a lot less). But he clears the bar pretty easily. He had a long career with a lot of good years. He had a stretch of absolute dominance, totaling 30 wins above replacement from 2001-2004 (not his fault that the only guy who may have better in that span -- though with a very nearly identical 30 wins -- was his teammate for three of those years). He was a fantastic postseason pitcher. The only way to justify keeping him out is a slavish devotion to the pitching "wins" stat, which is to say, punishing him for pitching for a lot of pretty poor Phillies teams.

Aaron Sele: No. I like Sele -- he shares with me two of the four or five places I consider hometowns, and he figured prominently in Voros McCracken's article introducing defense-independent pitching stats. Solid mid-rotation starter. But, I mean, no, of course not.

Lee Smith: No. Better than Roberto Hernandez, but unless you buy the "Player X is in so so should be Player Y" line of reasoning -- in which case Smith and dozens of other guys get in by virtue of being more deserving than Bruce Sutter -- I just can't see a single reason to consider him. 

Sammy Sosa: Yes. Having established that I don't believe in magic baseball pills (and the evidence that bat-corking gives hitters an advantage is even thinner), Sosa probably belongs. He's not the slam dunk the 609 homers would suggest -- he really had only ten years in which he was much more than an average hitter (of course, in some of those, he was much, much more), and he stopped contributing with his glove and legs after about age 28. I do think he did enough, but it's debatable. 

Mike Stanton: No. Giancarlo Cruz-Michael is probably already closer than Mike, who spent one of his 19 years as a (poor) closer and the rest as a solid but unspectacular middle reliever. Come to think of it, Stanton might be the Jose Mesa of this ballot, more than Mesa himself.

Alan Trammell: Yes. Another one I can't really find any more to say about. He just belongs. He probably should have won an MVP award in 1987, in which case he would've been indistinguishable from Barry Larkin and may have made it in years ago. He also could justifiably have won in 1984.

Larry Walker: Yes. I think there's a pretty significant Coors overcorrection going on. Lots of other guys hit at Coors during those crazy years, and Walker was much, much better than all of them, and was better than almost everybody else everywhere, no matter how you try to adjust those cartoonish numbers. He was also an excellent fielder with a cannon for an arm, and could run the bases. I don't feel comfortable drawing a line that leaves him on one side and Raines/Lofton on the other. They should all be in.

Todd Walker: No, of course, but that makes me sad. He was the first big prospect I remember following as he came up -- Baseball America's #7 back in 1997 -- and I had very high, Hall of Fame-type hopes. He had enough talent with the bat that he could have gotten there, if he had been a good defensive second baseman rather than a kind of stunningly poor one.

David Wells: No, Consistently really very good, but never great. By Baseball Reference's WAR, it's pretty interesting -- he was over four wins eight times, but never once got to five. He wouldn't be the worst pitcher in the Hall, and you could argue he was better than Morris. I assume with this ballot that Wells will fall below the five-percent threshold, and that's too bad. He deserves to hang on for a couple years.

Rondell White: No. Tons of talent, always hurt. Played 150 games once and 130 three more times. 

Bernie Williams: No. Another one that looks a lot like Dale Murphy -- Hall of Fame peak (or close to it), but a short one, and the whole package falls just short for me. I wouldn't complain at all if he got in. He won't, clearly, at least not for decades.

Woody Williams: No. I was surprised to see (this) Williams on the ballot, at first, but he had a much better career than I realized. He pitched in 15 seasons and was a solid reliever for the first three, then a starter for the next twelve, with 30 or more starts in seven of those years and an ERA around or better than average in ten of them. Not close to a Hall of Famer, of course, but I'm glad he made the ballot. 

That's fourteen yeses: Bagwell, Biggio, Bonds, Clemens, Lofton, Martinez, McGwire, Palmeiro, Piazza, Raines, Schilling, Sosa, Trammell, and Walker. I'm not going to cut any of them because I don't want to and no one can make me, but just because it seems necessary, if this were a real ballot and I had to adhere to that ridiculous limit, I'd lop off Sosa  Palmeiro, and McGwire, because they'd probably end up as the bottom three on my list. Finally, I'd cut Biggio, because I don't think he'll have a problem making it in the next year or two, so my vote for him seems the most expendable. 

Over the last three years, R.A. Dickey has basically been my favorite* baseball player. A couple of weeks ago, he was traded from my favorite baseball team, the New York Mets, to the Toronto Blue Jays. I could break down the trade for you from a sabermetric perspective, point out the wins and losses each team might expect to gain or lose. I could talk about the prospects involved in the trade, and why it makes sense to add an up-the-middle player on a rookie contract -- even if he might never be a star -- even if it means giving up the reigning Cy Young winner.

[ * Note: David Wright has made an astonishing comeback over the last few months.]

But I don't want to talk about that stuff. I want to talk about the things I think about when I think about R.A. Dickey.

Part One

My favorite baseball players have always been my favorites for what they do, and what they represent, not for who they are. We don't know who they really are. And yeah, even though we live in a world of Twitter and TMZ and six or seven 24-hour sports television stations, we still don't know these guys.

R.A. Dickey was a favorite of mine for what he did first, and that's throw a knuckleball. There's something about the knuckler that appeals to the more cerebral baseball fan, or at least to baseball fans who think that they're more cerebral. To put it in terms of Norse mythology or Marvel Comics, most major league ballplayers are like Thor, all powerful hammer and casting lightning. But knuckleball pitchers, they're like Loki. Mysterious. Clever. Mischievious. Knuckleball pitchers rely on deception, they foster chaos, they break from the normal patterns. And there's something very compelling about that. Especially when they're good at it.

[Author's Note: It appears that just about any article can be given a title that relates to a song in my iTunes library. Bonus points for choosing something from Craig Finn's ouerve on a slighly Minnesota-leaning blog?]

Big news, everybody. The Indians and Nick Swisher have ended their long courtship (seriously, it sounds as if Cleveland has been targeting him since September) and Swish will be making his home in Cleveland for the next four or five years, barring a trade. Reportedly, the deal is for four years and $56 million, with a sweet little vesting option for a fifth year, worth about another $14 million. A quick run of the calculation software tells us that we're looking at about a $14 million average annual value over the life of this deal.

In exchange for that moderate sum, the Indians are getting back one of the most reliable offensive players in baseball. You can count on Nick Swisher to provide your team with about 23-29 homers and a slash line somewhere near his career norm of .256/.361/.467. Nick doesn't miss many games, he takes walks, drives in runs, and adds virtually no value on the basepaths. Like clockwork, every year since 2005. While there are no sure things in baseball, betting that Nick Swisher will hit pretty much exactly like he did in 2012 is a pretty smart bet.

Therefore, Swisher should be a nice little replacement for the previous tenant of Cleveland's right field pastures -- Shin-Soo Choo. Choo was recently dealt as part of a deal to bring back pitching wunderkind Trevor Bauer, and though he may be a better (and more underrated) hitter than Swisher, 

But who would you rather have on your team? Nick or Shin-Soo? For 2013, I'd probably rather have Shin-Soo, for the simple reason that he's likely to be a slightly better hitter. Look at these wRC+ scores over the past five years for Choo: 150, 134, 145, 105, 131. For Swisher, his past five wRC+ numbers are 93, 125, 135, 124, and 128. Four out of five of Choo's seasons are better than all but one of Swisher's. While Nick dances around 25-35% better with the stick than league average, Choo usually sits anywhere between 30-50% Choo's best seasons are better than Swisher's best. His worst seasons are better than Swisher's worst. Nick Swisher is also about two years older, so I'd guess that age is more on Choo's side than Swisher's.

It's that most magical time of the year: when you realize that the malls are choked, your checking account is empty, and you have no idea how many people you need to buy gifts for. Instead of stocking up on every chintzy tchotchke available, on the off chance that your next door neighbor has bought you season two of ALF, why not purchase things you know anyone with a pulse will love? 

Thanks to the wonders of the internet and overnight delivery, and with me as your Virgil to the world of commerce, you need never worry about holiday shopping again. Let's go onward:

Clothing: Scooby Doo Thong

Every Scooby Doo episode ended with the unmasking of a frightening, hooked-nose criminal. Remove this men's thong and you'll get the same result.

While the thong represents the dream gift for a particular kind of fan, it does make you less likely to ask, "Scooby Doo, where are you?" 

Purchase it on etsy. 

Home Decor: Charlie, The Baseball Spider

For the second year in a row, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim* have come out of Anaheim nowhere to sign the biggest name on the free agent market, inking former MVP Josh Hamilton to a five-year, $125 million contract. Everyone's shocked, including Jon Daniels and Torii Hunter.

[ * - Note: For real? We're still doing this?]

First of all ... I'd be interested to think out the expected offensive upgrade here. Hunter and Mike Trout had career seasons last year ... Albert Pujols might improve ... carry the one ... yeah, I think that the Angels will probably hit again next year. It may not be a 2012 offensive explosion, but the likelihood of that was pretty tiny anyways. Adding Hamilton will definitely defray some of the hurt from losing Torii Hunter's bat and the fact that Mike Trout might actually be human next season.

As far as defense goes, well, I don't know. Hamilton won't be playing center field, so he'll probably be okay if he stays on the field. In fact, I think he's a bit above-average in left. If Peter Bourjos is the third outfielder, that defense will be great. If Mark Trumbo is, well, good thing Mike Trout can cover a lot of ground.

But then there's the pitching staff. After missing out on Zack Greinke, the Angels are left with a rotation of Weaver / Wilson / Blanton / Hanson / Richards? for 2013, which doesn't exactly strike fear into anyone's heart. I actually liked the Blanton deal, but this is still a team that could use another starter. And I wouldn't be filled with confidence upon hitting a playoff series. But it's not awful, either. Just okay-ish.

As you may have heard (either out in the mean streets of the World Wide Web, or even earlier today here at The Platoon Advantage), the Diamonbacks, Reds, and Indians made a sweet three-team deal. The major pieces are Shin-Soo Choo and Jason Donald heading to Cincinnati, prospect Didi Gregorious, reliever Tony Sipp, and huge bust first baseman Lars Anderson off to Arizona, while wunderkind Trevor Bauer is the main return for Cleveland.

The biggest surprise in this trade, if there was one, was that Bauer would travel from Arizona to Cleveland. Despite his name being bandied about in trade rumors (we'll get to this later), Bauer is a top pitching prospect. Usually that brings back quite a substantial return in a trade, like a Denard Span or a Carlos Beltran. What's the deal here?

Here's a quick primer on Trevor Bauer: Bauer was the No. 3 overall pick in the 2011 Rule 4 Draft out of UCLA. He was the No. 3 pick because he was a boss at UCLA, and in each minor-league stop in 2011 and 2012, he was appropriately boss-like. Bauer held a strikeout percentage of 28% or better at each stop in his minor-league trek, and by the time he was done with Triple-A in 2012, Bauer had reduced his most glaring weakness -- bases on balls -- down to a 10.1% walk rate. If you add all this up, factor in his age (he's going into his age-22 season), and divide that by his solid mechanics ... well, what you get is a top-flight pitching prospect. If Bauer isn't one of the top 20 pitching prospects in the game, he'd be awfully close.

So why would the Diamondbacks trade him for a shortstop who can't hit, a reliever who's no good, and a failed first base prospect?

I'm sure I won't be the only person writing this piece, and I may not be the only TPAer writing this piece, and I may not even be the only TPAer writing this piece for TPA, but here I go anyway: can we view the three-sided Shin-Soo Choo/Trevor Bauer trade in a way that makes it look not-ridiculous for Arizona?

Let's start with the facts:

Indians get: Bauer, Stubbs, Shaw, Albers. D-backs get: Gregorius, Sipp, Lars Anderson. Reds get: Choo, Donald. Whoa.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 12, 2012

Thanks, Jeff!

To be clear on who all of those players are:

Trevor Bauer is a very top pitching prospect who was taken third overall in the 2011 draft, then signed a major-league contract and made a brief but shitty debut this year, with 16 1/3 innings of six-plus ERA ball. Still, his strikeout rates in the minors have been off the chain and his walks, while certainly the weak point in his game, aren't "good lord he has no idea where the ball is going" bad.

Drew Stubbs is a 28-year-old center fielder who just suffered through a miserable, well-below-replacement-level season for the Reds. He had a very good year in 2010, fell off to below average in 2011, and then did what he did in 2012. He's now arbitration-eligible, though obviously his platform season being what it was means he can't demand very much.

Bryan Shaw is a 25-year-old reliever who was solid in 2011 but saw a rise in his walks and a fall in whiffs in 2012, dropping him to "not really rosterable" levels. He's still in the minimum-salary stage of things.

Matt Albers is a 30-year-old reliever whose sterling ERA masked enormous amounts of ball-in-play luck in 2012. He's a groundballer, arbitration-eligible, swings lefty for some reason (he throws right), and has accumulated 0.1 WARP in 442 1/3 big-league innings. HEY HEY HEY.

Didi Gregorius is a 23-year-old Dutch shortstop whose real name is apparently "Mariekson." He's actually from the Netherlands. "Dutch shortstop" isn't a type of thing I just made up for you right now. To the extent that numbers matter for a European minor-leaguer, his do not pop. Kevin Goldstein had him as a three-star prospect before 2012, though.

Tony Sipp is a 29-year-old lefty reliever with extreme flyball tendencies and remarkable BABIP-suppression. It's too early (220 1/3 innings in four years) to say that such suppression is a skill, but that's always the case with relievers. It should also be noted that he gives up quite a few homers, which suppresses BABIP artificially -- they're hard-hit balls that are not counted in either the numerator or denominator of BABIP. This is why Colin Wyers prefers BACON (batting average on contact). Sipp is arbitration-eligible for the first time.

Lars Anderson is a minor-league first baseman without enough power who is, at 25, already in his third organization. He knocked the shit out of the ball in a quarter-season at Portland in 2008 (.316/.438/.526, 163 PA) but has since pretty much only walked, keeping his OBP respectable and not impressing any other way.

Shin-Soo Choo is a right-fielder who will be playing center in Cincinnati in his age-30 season, his third arbitration year. He peaked in 2008 through 2010 (with his total value metrics in 2008 not being as impressive because he missed almost half the season with an elbow injury), had a bad and injury-ridden 2011, and came back with a very nice 2012 that didn't come particularly close to replicating the aforementioned peak. He can probably be an above-average hitter for center and a bad defender, assuming the position doesn't wear him down or flat-out injure him.

Jason Donald is 28, plays 2/3 of the positions (no right field, catcher, or first in 2012) and only has 603 career PA in three years to judge his hitting. If the .254 total TAv he's put up in that season-equivalent is representative of his true talent, then he'd be an average player as a starter and an above-average one as a reserve. He still makes the minimum salary.

Ok? So Arizona gave up an excellent pitching prospect and two fungible relievers to get a decent shortstop prospect, a reliever who might give up three homers per nine in the Arizona air, and a washout first baseman who certainly will not get past Paul Goldschmidt. Which means that what the deal really comes down to is Bauer for Gregorius, because the rest of the guys are just needle-nudgers, not needle-movers.

Which kinda makes things hard. I didn't realize earlier that the Diamondbacks really just got Gregorius back for Bauer. But let's do this anyway.

Trevor Bauer is less than one year younger than Gregorius, so this isn't a case where Gregorius is some ancient "prospect" who's like 26 and still not made it. He is young and has development and upside left, just as much as Bauer does.

As to the country of origin, which one might imagine could be an issue, yes, Bauer came up playing high school and travel ball in the baseball hotbed of southern California, dominated at UCLA, and was on the collegiate national team. He pitched in the College World Series. But Gregorius has been playing in the United States for five years now. He's got 1909 minor-league plate appearances, 428 games at shortstop. He's been working and holding his own against high-level competition, in other words.

This brings us to the only place where I think we can find a rationale for doing a deal like this. There have been whispers (or more?) that the Arizonans were unhappy with Bauer's intransigence on his warmup and workout routines. He's fanatical about his mechanics and pitching and somewhat legendary for his long-toss. And he does this on his last warmup pitch of an inning. I can't go so far as to say that Bauer might increase his likelihood of injury by doing things that the MLB mainstream frowns on, but we can ask whether his marriage to his own routine signals something about his inability or lack of desire to make adjustments. The very best 20-year-olds in the world get knocked around by the hitters at the top of the chain if they don't learn how to adjust to the gameplans and skills of major-league hitters. If the Diamondbacks asked Bauer to do X and Y and he balked, esp. if X and Y are not just warmup techniques but in fact approaches to pitching itself, well, you can see how a front office with probably 1000 years of baseball experience might think that Bauer's bust potential is righteously high such that they'd be willing to trade him for six years of a hopefully (maybe even probably?) league average shortstop even though everyone had visions of a sugarplum ace dancing in their heads during the 2011 draft.

So that's the argument. Is this a thing you buy?

Just as parents today must be careful not to coddle their children too much, baseball fans must avoid coveting their favorite prospects. This tendency to prospect overvaluation makes sense, though. After finally learning that signing pricey and mediocre free agents and ignoring the perfectly apt replacements in the minors was the wrong way to go about things, we all got wise, fans and professionals alike. Even casual baseball fans have started scouring top 30 prospect lists and joined keeper leagues. But we may have gone to far. After the Royals traded away their upper farm system to the Royals over the weekend, the online reaction was swift and fierce, like a Viking warrior's response to someone drinking his mead. Some were calling it the worst trade in modern memory and the mood was one of disbelief, not believing that the Royals could trade away so much future value without at least some heavy hypnotic suggestion from Andrew Friedman. And sure, maybe Dayton Moore is a fool or he was selfishly making a last gasp attempt at keeping his job, but on the other hand, the Royals have had one pitcher throw 200 innings over the last three years. So perhaps there was some sense to the deal, too. 

1. Daisuke Matsuzaka
2. Alex Gordon
3. Delmon Young
4. Phil Hughes
5. Homer Bailey
6. Cameron Maybin
7. Evan Longoria
8. Brandon Wood
9. Justin Upton
10. Andrew Miller

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