Odds & Ends: Astros, Acta, Soria

Alexei Ramirez for Soria.

Royals wouldn't trade Soria within the division, and the Sox wouldn't trade Alexei within the division. Besides, the White Sox don't need a late-inning reliever. That proposition makes no sense, and the Royals would (or at least should) look to trade Soria for multiple young prospects, not one promising infielder coming off a down season.

The comments from the Royals fans at that blog are pretty depressing though. So many of them act like trading Soria would be worse than the apocalypse.

Normally, I would agree that the Royals should absolutely look to trade Soria. However, in this instance, I wouldn't for two reasons:

1. The late-inning relief market is flush with options this offseason. While Soria is one of the best closers in the game, it's still a tough sell to get someone to give up three or four good prospects when they could just go out and sign Soriano, Gonzalez, Valverde, Wagner, Rodney, etc. With Jenks, Papelbon, and Nathan all being rumored to have a certain extent of availability, there's just too many options to maximize a return on Soria.

2. It's Dayton Moore. What else do I need to say? I wouldn't trust him to get value for Soria even if MLB created a rule that mandated all ninth inning pitchers must have the initials "J.S."

I agree with the commenter there who said the best course of action is to move Soria to the rotation. The Royals team is starved for pitching, and they're using their second-best arm for 50 innings per year. Adding Soria to the rotation just makes too much sense. He's a former starter with absolutely tremendous stuff, and a 1-2-3 of Greinke, Soria, Meche is a damn fine combination. It's a shame Moore traded away Nunez and Ramirez for basically nothing, because those were their next best shots at closing.

However, you've still got names like Juan Cruz, who you're paying a fairly substantial amount of money. Cruz had a rough year, but he's typically a big-time strikeout pitcher who they could attempt to replace Soria with in the ninth.

If the Soria experiment in the rotation fails, then maybe move him back to the bullpen. It's a risk moving him to a position where he could fail, but a team that starved for pitching can't have a talent like that only throwing a handful of innings each season.

Mellinger says it perfectly. What good is an All-Star closer on a team that's so too flawed to actually extract any value from having him? If the worst that can happen is you lose 98 games instead of 90 by moving Soria to the rotation, is that such a bad thing? At least it would improve their draft slot for 2011...

Let's hope not. I mean they should considering they did sign the top 3 FA's in the game....not exactly a huge accomplishment should be expected when the disparity is so broad. However, real baseball fans will have to hope for a Philly repeat.

Well, its 3:30 AM so forgive me if this sounds stupid, but what about a soria for crawford/upton trade. The rays need a closer, have agreat outfield prospect (forget the name) who could take the CF job and I think one of those speedy guys could help the royals.

Although, I do agree that the royals will probably want multiple unproven prospects. One proven star for another doesnt make much sense for a team in rebuilding mode.

"From there im not really to sure what their needs are."

Like everybody, a young power pitcher or hitter. But I suppose Hanson and is obviously off the table, same came probably be said for Heyward. Other upgrades could be at short (unfortunately Betancourt is kinda entrenched), catcher, and pretty much every outfield position.

TRADE SORIA TO THE YANKEES FOR A CANDY BAR. MIGHT AS WELL BECAUSE HE WILL EVENTUALLY GO THERE ANYWAY.

PS - GLAD TO SEE THE YANKEES IN THE WORLD SERIES! IT ONLY TOOK 200 MILLION TO DO SO.

PSS -MLB IS A FRAUD.

The Yanks didn't do anything wrong and I would have done the same thing if I were them...

But it doesn't make me hate them any less or think that the system is any less broken. Sure small market teams will always be in the mix but it takes a perfect storm every once in a while for them to compete and vast majority of the big spenders are always in it.

Sure small market teams will always be in the mix but it takes a perfect storm every once in a while for them to compete and vast majority of the big spenders are always in it.
__________________________________________
So this entire decade has been nothing but a series of perfect storms? Baseball's structure has NBA/NFL beat by a mile.

Yeah when your options are:

A. Two years to fix a team of aging veterans (minus Pence and Bourn) with a desolate farm system

or

B. Three years to fix a team of talented young players with several top prospects that are almost ready to go

...it shouldn't be a tough decision. Good move on Acta's part and good move on Cleveland's part. I think he'll be a good fit with the Indians players.