Blasts from the Past: Oops Edition

I feel kinda bad about ragging on an esteemed DRaysBay staffer over a column he wrote praising David Price right before King Velociraptor Jesus went out this week and took a couple of dumps on the mound. So I decided to use some 20/20 hindsight to look back through the DRB archives and find some truly outrageously bad opinions and predictions. As you'll see after the jump, it wasn't very difficult to find stuff MUCH worse than ANY of us would EVER write... I guess.

(Note: Names of staffers and/or members have been removed to protect the innocent...)

The DEVIL Rays were rumored to have talked to Atlanta about acquiring their 3B wonderprospect Andy Marte in exchange for SS Julio Lugo. However, the D-Rays didn't make that trade, or any other trade for that matter.

The fanbase (such as it was) was restless. Some leapt to the new front office's defense, such as this unnamed person, whose post is cringeworthy on several levels...

Yes, they did twiddle their thumbs during the Winter Meetings,
but did they make any bad deals? No.
Did they trade any of the "key" players on the team? No.

If they traded Rocco, I'd be pissed off.

If they traded Gomes, I'd be pissed off.

If they traded CC, I'd be really pissed off.

If they traded Kazmir, I'd be fuming and foaming at the mouth.

If they traded Brignac, May God Have Mercy on their souls...

I liked Marte as much as everyone else did, however I just thought it was idiotic
that every damn "big name" sportswriter made a report that we demanded
more for Lugo. Seriously, who in the wild blue hell believes for a fact that we
would pass up a player that we've been hearing about for the last month or so?

Ahem. Anyway, Marte was traded instead to Boston for Edgar Renteria, then traded again the next year to Cleveland in a multiplayer deal that included Kelly Shoppach (to CLE) and Coco Crisp (to BOS).

Andy Marte, that can't-miss future Hall of Famer who had everybody (including me, I must admit) drooling back in ought-five, needed elbow surgery and went on to hit .218/.277/.358 in 5 seasons with Cleveland before being released last year. Right now, he's 28 y/o AAA filler, sporting a .208/.284/.336 slash in the Pirates' organization.

So, despite the melodrama, it looks like a Brignac for Marte deal would've been pretty much a wash. And for the record, poor unappreciated Julio Lugo hit .269/.334/.373 during that same time period, which goes to show that Young Andy Friedman already knew what he was doing!

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I'll do more of these if anybody finds them entertaining...