hot stove: dooby dooby doo

Philly granolas rejoice as their number is increased. First inning Freddy and his hemp necklace shipped for uber-prospect Gavin Floyd and former Thome swag Gio Gonzalez. No word on whether Freddy will find a line on a reliable guy.

Floyd and Gonzalez is decent swag for Garcia, who's in the last season of his contract. (Basically we're getting Floyd + Gonzalez for the Phillies getting one year of Garcia + trying to re-sign him.) I guess I'm disappointed and briefly furious because the going rate for starting pitching seems so high (Ted Lilly to the Cubs for 4/$40 mill, which apparently made some people faint), so it seems like the Sox could've gotten more. The positives slightly outweigh the negatives, even if it's not a big splash. I'm not super thrilled. I guess this also means the market for Vazquez is bigger than for Freddy which is odd, since Garcia, overall and of late, has been the better pitcher.

Bad things:

• I'm hearing a rumor that Crash might be a throw-in on this trade. No, no, a thousand times NO. Let my Brian Anderson free.
  
• Seriously. Ted Lilly, never pitched 200 IP, never won more than 15 games, never had an ERA under 4.00 (not that these are the most important stats, but these are the ones idiot GMs go by), is getting $10 mill per, and Garcia's been steady with the innings, wins, ERA, and strikeout rate, has the shiny Proven Veteran (TM) tag, the even shinier Proven Playoff Starter (c) tag, and we just get two prospies? I was hoping to land a Carl Crawford with the Garcia bait.
  
• Didn't we get rid of Gio Gonzalez on the premise that prospects are expendable? And here we go getting him back. Our farm system must stink to high heaven.
• Floyd's ERA, walk rate, and WHIP look terrible.
  

Good things:

• Finally, an open spot for Brandon McCarthy in the rotation.
• This means also about $9 mill in savings in salary, which hypothetically can be used for a NEW. LEFT. FIELDER. Hint, hint.
• Floyd is only 23, lefthanded, and has a wicked curve. Coop did well in turning Matt Thornton around, so hopefully he can work the same magic with Floyd.
• Garcia was in the last year of his contract, and trying to re-sign him in the current ludicrous market would've killed the payroll, and dude was clearly on a decline.

I'm sad because I wanted a king's ransom in this pitching-crazed free for all, and all we got was... stock options. And we need upgrades in left field, backup C, and maybe center field. The best signings so far have been by the Dodgers (Schmidt, not Gonzo) and the A's (Piazza, the new hotness for fantasy baseball because he DHs with catcher eligibility).