i have almost completely lost interest baseball (with the mets sucking so badly, the steroids situation and now this trade), if it were not for rotisserie league. i've never picked a yankee, never will (and somehow i manage to do pretty well anyways).

As a Dallasite with moderate interest in seeing the Rangers improve, I'm glad to see it happen. Though, given Hicks track record with this team, I find it highly unlikely that he will take the money saved and invest it in good, young pitchers. But mostly, I'm just thankful we didn't get Manny Ramirez in a trade with Boston. With Rasheed Wallace going to the Atlanta Hawks, we managed to avoid two of the biggest malcontents in sports.

Eventually, baseball is going to have to impose a strict salary cap, much like the NFL. Is it any wonder that the NFL, where lots of teams have a chance to succeed, is considerably more popular than either the NBA or MLB, where few teams really have a shot at the beginning of the season?

And once again, Red Sox fans all over the world are throwing up. The Curse of the Bambino lives!

This news really pisses me off. I hate the Yankees!

D-rod,
Take heart, man. The way I see it, A-Rod and Jeter will be at each other's throats by mid-season (and the whole team will have had it with trying to get enough Oxygen in the dugout around these guys). Is Giambi ever coming back off his steroid-induced series of injuries (the guy looks like Popeye post-spinach--sheesh!)? And unless they find SOMEONE to pitch besides Mussina (who has to be the most despised man on the team, whatta laugh) all that power is going to mean lots of high-scoring games but no clear advantage over the more balanced (but are they fair?) Red Sox.

Yankee fans need to take a break from the trash talking and admit they really haven't pulled ahead, just altered the balance (with lots and lots of cash--again).

Rangers fans are the real winners here. Sure, Soriano failed miserably in the post-season, but they aren't going there anytime soon, and he's a fabulous hitter in the reg. season. He's a steal!! Plus, according to Bill James, he was a much better fit with Yankee Stadium than is A-Rod. Look for the superstar's numbers to go DOWN significantly this season.

All in all, I'm not happy about this deal, by any means. But it's not the apocalypse either.

Smile Red Sox fans! This is STILL our year.

I have to agree with much of your analysis, as usual Kelli. I enjoy A's-Red Sox games, but I hope the SF Giants prevail this year.

Kelli,

New acquisition Javier Vasquez won 15 games for the freakin' Expos. Imagine what he's like with a decent team behind him. Now add Kevin Brown. Contreras looked like he was finding his feet at the end of the season. Lieber was a 20-game winner a couple seasons ago, so if he's recovered (usual time: 18 months... time away: 18 months) look out. Add Quantrill and Tom Gordon to Mariano Rivera in the bullpen, and 3 good starters is all they need.

Could the Yankees still implode? Yes. That's why we have to play the games. But the Yanks have a $200 million payroll, 6 TIMES that of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays - a team in their division.

I'm sorry, but payroll differentials of 6x aren't in the same division. They aren't even playing in the same league - and the game suffers because of it.

There are definite benefits to Texas, which gets A-Rod's contract albatross out from around its neck. But the trade also highlights, more than ever, how little hope many teams have heading into Spring Training and how rigidly stratified baseball has become. Oakland's "Moneyball" strategy can help close the gap somewhat, as long as it's practiced by only a few teams. But there's a hole at the heart of the game, and until it's fixed baseball will continue to bleed from a self-inflicted wound.

All you hypocritical Red Sox fans out there, I want to know this: you made this happen.

Joe,

Your comments about the ridiculously lopsided nature of MLB are %100 on the mark. But that, for the most part, is not the take of most sports writers for the past two days (instead we get more agonizingly inane BS about the COTB--Curse of you know who). Thus I have refused to predicate my arguments on a utopian fantasy in which structural change occurs and G. Steinbrenner is halted in his monomania to acquire all the WMDs of baseballdom. Instead, I am trying to focus on the very real chance that the Yanquis cannot buy themselves a championship in the way that, say, Carmen Electra can buy herself a new set of titties. We shall have to see how it all plays out. I refuse to let this psychological warfare get to me. If it does, the terrorists win.

Praktike,

WHA???

Allah is having fits...

Kelli.

Joke.

If Major League Baseball really wants to do something about the Yankees' money, the best way to go about it is to cut into the Yankees' revenue stream by moving one or two more teams to New York. The New York market split four ways would still be larger than a lot of the small-markets that "can't compete". But too many baseball owners just want to pocket their revenue-sharing money, put an inferior product on the field, and blame the players for their self-inflicted salary problems. Tampa Bay has a very low payroll because they're a bad team, playing in a lousy stadium (with a 30-year lease they can't get out of) and the guy who runs them (Vince Namoli) has given no indication he knows anything about baseball.

But the real problem in this case is the incompetence of the Rangers' management. Not for signing A-Rod - that's the one thing they've done right. (They did overpay him and were only bidding against themselves, but the contract wasn't that far out of line.) But everything else they've done over the past three years has been a bad move - look at the contracts given to Chan Ho Park, Jeff Zimmerman, Rusty Greer, etc, etc. If you take A-Rod's money out of their payroll, they're still comparable to successful teams like Oakland, Minnesota, Florida and Anaheim, and a)they're in a much bigger market (Dallas-Fort Worth) and b)they also had Alex Frickin' Rodriguez!

Then they compound it by making an utterly stupid trade to dump the contract, getting nowhere near the fair value, and strengthening the best team in the league. I have nothing to back this up, but I'd be surprised if, with the amount of money the Rangers are kicking in, they couldn't have found some other team willing to take on the contract - which is costing the Yankees less than Derek Jeter's.

Oh, and I'm a Met fan. I despise the Yankees. But baseball's problems aren't all their fault. And baseball had more exciting games in the last postseason than pro football did all last year. Parity=ugly football.