ok, not to rant and rave, but I am actually semi-upset about the handling of our OF situation. don't get me wrong, i think that front office is doing a fine team overhauling this team, putting us in a situation to be perennial winners. but, as of right now, we have no legitimate right fielder, not a single one. sure, we have a bunch of "right fielders", but no one should should be out there on any sort of consistent basis. at one point we have ridiculous depth out there, and i know we still have some, but most isn't major league ready, leaving us in the situation we are in now. now, you might say, well we had Rocco. yes, we did, we always have, but if i thought for one minute that the front office was hinging their plans on having Rocco in RF, then i would be terribly disappointed in their lack of realistic foresight. no, but i believe they knew the same thing we all did, that Rocco was never a sure thing, and that plans need to be made to take that into account.

but instead, what do we do? we don't protect Josh Hamilton, which though at the time may have seemed like not a big deal, this is a man we put millions  of dollars and years and years and years of investment into, and just as he was really getting his stuff together, we fail to protect him? and now he's  (i know spring training stats don't mean much, but the guy is for real)hitting over .500, has the most RBI's amongst all hitters, and an slugging % over 1. amazing. he might become what we always thought he would become, and looking back it seems like a major major gaffe to not protect him.

secondly, we trade Delmon Young, which was fine with me, b/c at the time i assumed we had a possibly healthy Rocco, and if not then a high-ceiling Dukes waiting to take over.

but then we trade Dukes, which was probably a good move, he probably never would have gotten his life back together here in Tampa, and we got good value in return.

which leaves us with Rocco, who we now know, and probably always knew, even if we tried to convince ourselves that this was the year for him, was never going to play, or at least not play often. now we're down to a platoon of poor fielders and specialty hitters, and have a huge gaping hole not only in our lineup, but in our field.

what i'm getting at is this. trading Young and Dukes were good moves, they probably had to be done. but it's the move we didn't make that could really haunt us now, as all it would have taken was a small sacrifice, which given the sacrafice the team already made to him would seem like a forgone conclusion, for a possible large reward, but we didn't do it.

and now, we're stuck in the situation we are in, all b/c we lacked the most basic and obvious foresight.