A's trade for Holliday; Titles de-punned

In the surprise move of the young offseason, the Oakland Athletics have traded closer Huston Street, outfielder Carlos Gonzalez (acquired as the centrepiece of the Haren deal), and left-handed pitcher Greg Smith to the Colorado Rockies for star outfielder Matt Holliday.

Billy Beane's made a habit of surprising people for a long time now, so it won't come as a huge shock to many of you that this trade doesn't seem to make much sense from the A's perspective. Holliday is an outstanding player, contributing with both bat and glove, but he's only going to be in Oakland for a year, whereupon he'll likely bolt for greener less-green pastures, leaving two draft picks in his wake - draft picks the A's would have picked up for Street a year later anyway. Seeing as the A's are currently a bad team, one wonders how the addition of a bona-fide star player is that useful to them. Is Beane going to make an attempt to re-sign him? Is he going to be flipped for prospects at the deadline? Is he making a crazy push for contention? Who knows.

As for the return package, Street is a (criminally underrated) top-tier closer who'll replace Fuentes in Colorado without too much ado, but Smith is a well-below average finesse pitcher, and Carlos Gonzalez packs a lot of tools but not much in the way of performance. Still, for one year of Holliday, Colorado seem to have done reasonably well. Of course, Billy Beane is smarter than me, so who knows.

So, to summarise:

To Oakland: Holliday
To Colorado: Street, Gonzalez, Smith.
Edge: Right now, I'd have to say the Rockies, but Beane may well make me look foolish here.

The other big trade today was outfielder Willingham and pitcher Scott Olsen making their way north to the Nationals in return for second baseman Emilio Bonifacio and prospects Jake Smolinski and PJ Dean. These are all players with severe question marks - Willingham can hit but can't play outfield, Olsen has (had?) a lot of potential but has been abysmal for the past couple of seasons. Bonaficio is a decent fielding bleh hitting second basemen, and I wouldn't be able to recognise Smolinski or Dean if they tapdanced naked on my computer. The majority of Florida's return won't see the majors for a few years yet.

It looks like Washington's trying to upgrade both its pitching staff and offence here. They have succeded with the latter but may find that they've shot themselves in the foot on the pitching. Willingham's not going to make the outfield any more agile (although there are rumours he may get shunted to first), and Scott Olsen, for all the hype, is terrible.

For Florida, they're saving money and improving the infield defence while picking up some presumably interesting prospects. Is this the precursor to an Uggla move?

To Florida: Bonifacio, Smolinski, Dean
To Washington: Willingham, Olsen.
Edge: I have trouble believing that any team which adds Scott Olsen to their roster has actually got better. So Marlins it is.