It's Broken, So Let's Fix It

If you’re feeling a little like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, welcome to the club. For the second year in a row the Stones and Kenndoza Line have made a trade that has left many in the league feeling unfulfilled.

I am the first to admit that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. However there have been at least three trades in the last two years that don’t seem so beautiful.

The Bulls received Randy Johnson, Carlos Zambrano, Takashi Saito and Francisco Cordero for a decent hitting thirdbaseman and some future. The Karma Train seems to have bitten the Bulls in the ass with Zambrano going on the DL right after the trade and Saito now out for four to six weeks.

I don’t want to get into a player by player analysis of the Stone/Line trade. I would strongly suggest that you visit David’s blog and read the breakdown by The Professor and then the rebuttal by the Stones. They both make compelling arguments pro and con of the trade.

Here are the two issues I have with the trade. In order to complete the trade and make it legal, The Line had to have five pitchers that are currently on the disabled list on their active roster. They also had to promote a catcher who is still in the minor leagues to their active roster. So that means that a full 25% of their active roster has no chance of earning any statistics for the foreseeable future.

I quote the Constitution: Even with these measures in place, it is still expected that each CFCL owner will consider “the integrity of the league” as well as the good of their own team when considering trades.

Now admittedly the above sentence does not say “An owner shall not consummate a deal if it undermines the integrity”, it says “will consider the integrity of the league when considering trades.” For all we know the Stones and Line did consider the ramifications of what the Line’s roster would look like and then said “the hell with it, let’s do it anyway.”

Last year a lot was written and said about two teams (The Meisters and Splinters) that had many players on their active roster that were either in the minor leagues, on the disabled list or retired. That occurred due to apathy. This year it was deliberate.

Going into Monday night’s games, the Line was 6th in H/S; between the Bulls and Revenge in K/BB; 2 QS behind the Hats; and in WHIP was .04 behind the Ruffins and .02 ahead of the Bulls. Pitching points are being affected by this trade, yet the Line had only 4 active pitchers to compete against the rest of the league.

This says nothing of the fact the offense that traded hands. The Line gave up Pujols, Winn, Matsui and Martin and got in return Matt Kemp. Take a look at where the Line is in every offensive category except OBP (where they are in first by a bunch). They are in the thick of every other category a few RBI, Runs, SBs and TBs away from other contending teams.

For the second year in a row, a wonderful and exciting title race among four teams last year and as many as seven teams this year, has been reduced to who wants to make the effort to finish second?

To be fair, last year Steve made what I said at the time was a completely lopsided deal (he gave up far more than he had to in order to acquire the players he did). Kenn wins the title last year, but due in large part to that trade Steve is in position to win this year. So we have to be careful in how we look at things.

I don’t know what the answer is, because this cannot be looked at in a vacuum. The Line may have given themselves a great step to contending in 2009, just like the Stones did last year in their positioning for this year. However I can’t help but think that having one quarter of your team being inactive on the “active” roster as a result of a trade, can’t possibly be in the best interests of the league.

We need to solve this as a league. Visit the CFCL Forum to lend your voice to the discussion on how this league handles trades. Every opinion counts.