Cuz it’s not your money, stu, so why can’t we demand that it be spent?

*pre

Well, we’re talking about Sabean, so let’s offer the oldest guy we’ve got sitting around, plus maybe some money they can kick towards Lincecum’s 2/@40.5.

No reply from Hoynes yet. I’m not holding my breath.

I think you’re letting Cols’s dead horse obsession get to you. Two facts do make the inability or unwillingness to acquire a first baseman a failure, at least to my eye. First, LaPorta’s putridity makes even a mediocre or flawed first baseman an upgrade. Second, there was a surplus of first basemen that could have been acquired at reasonable prices—including (at various times) Pena, Kotchman, Lee, Morales, Rizzo, Trumbo, Alonzo. Hell, even Bryan LaHair probably could have been an interesting, cheap get. A few of those guys are still blocked and/or unemployed—because there was a supply/demand imbalance. Yet, Cleveland’s still holding its hat.

Now, they didn’t have a great chance at some of those guys (Pena, Morales), but even in those cases, it was just because they made a judgment that the price it took to bring them to Cleveland wasn’t worth it. Which is fine—except that if you start protesting the price of gas at every gas station, you eventually end up taking the bus. I’ll be disappointed, given where this team thinks it is—where I think this team is—if they start the year with a LaPorta/Marson platoon.

Having said that, the offseason isn’t over. I still expect them to either sign Kotchman or to pull a trade out of nowhere, sometime between now and Opening Day. So I’m not whining about it in every comment I post. But I would see it as a failure, and I ask for a presumption of sanity.

I dunno man, he was sub-Mendoza on his last lap in the AL. 34 years old, $7.25 Mil – I’ll pass.