Daily Archives: August 3, 2004

I’m sure some of you have already poured through most of the trade-deadline coverage. For those who haven’t, here is a series of links that may be of some interest:

Bob Ryan, Peter Gammons, Gordon Edes, Tom Verducci and Bill Simmons on the Nomar Garciaparra trade. In addition, check out what Curt Schilling has to say to the Boston Dirt Dogs in an exlusive interview and what Ed Cossette and Red Sox Nation make of losing a Boston icon.

The fellas over at The Hardball Times are on the case too. Rivals in Exile, Ben Jacobs and Larry Mahnken weigh in on the Yankee and Sox deals; Studes commiserates about the Mets (thanks, Avkash) and Aaron Gleeman covers all of the major moves, soup to nuts.

Oh, and Murray Chass and Tim Marchman tackle the Mets too.

The Yanks start a three-game series vs. the A’s tonight in the Bronx. Mark Mulder goes against Jon Lieber. Mulder hasn’t fared well in two outings vs. the Yanks this season; think he won’t bounce back with a strong performance? Tomorrow, Esteban Loaiza makes his Yankee debut against the hard-throwing Rich Harden. Finally, Barry Zito will face Kevin Brown on Thursday afternoon in the series finale.

Initially I thought that the Red Sox did a decent job of getting some talent in return for Nomar Garciaparra. But after reading some of the fine analysis around the Net–including a roundtable of All-Baseball’s best and brightest–it seems as if Boston acted out of desperation more than anything else. I love reading transaction analysis, especially because it doesn’t hold much interest for me as a writer. However, I am an avid fan of the guys who are “doing it, doing it, and doing it well.”

Joe Sheehan–one of the best reasons to subscribe to Baseball Prospectus–offered a characteristically sound take on the Garciaparra trade:

I do believe the Red Sox will be better defensively, but that’s a side point. I don’t think the Sox are a better team today than they were Friday, and it’s not close. I think they made this trade not because it makes them better, but because they didn’t have it in them to stand up to Garciaparra, who by most accounts had been a jackass since the Alex Rodriguez trade fell through. I rarely