Life of Baseball - A Sentimental Offering

There are few things that depress me about my teams (A's and Royals) more than trades of guys that symbolize (in my mind) the team concept itself. The other things that depress me about my teams is just the Royals in general (cue cymbal crash).

No, in light of last weeks avoidance of arbitration with Kirk Saarloos, today they traded him to the Reds (FRIGGIN' BLAH). Was Kirk a great player, by no means. What Kirk symbolized in Oakland was a mindset (not totally going back to Moneyball) that a player didn't have to have SPECIFIC attributes to be a competent big leaguer. One does not need to hit 100 MPH on his fastball to be an effective ML pitcher. Kirk was basically the anti-ML stereotype. He probably hit 85 more than he hit anything else, but the guy had a semi-nasty sinker that got twice as many groundballs as flyballs. And now he has gone to a crappy team where he will languish. He will actually probably get better from the AL to NL move, or maybe not since Reds Stadium is homer happy (and Kirk can give up some HRs (19 last year, 11 the previous)).

Trades are mandatory and the A's seem to have gotten a stud closer that will start in AAA at the age of 24. It's just a sad phenomenon that has to occur, good for the organization, but also you lose the face of the organization; i.e., Damon, Beltran, Dejesus (sooner rather than later I'm sure).

This is more of a sentimental posting, Kirk was nothing but a 5th man in the rotation or a long man, but he will be missed and so will all of those that were traded and forced the fans to adapt to a new face of the team b/c the A's will have more a face of Jason Kendall (overpaid and old, though still serviceable) instead of "homegrown" (Kirk originally came from Houston, but for cheap), CHEAP talent.