M's Trade for Scrub

The highly coveted John Parrish is now ours, for the low-low price of Sebastien Boucher. Now, Boucher was nothing to write home about (think TJ Bohn, but with more speed), but to just throw him to the Orioles for a goddawful 29 year old reliever is just downright idiotic.

Our bullpen is fine. Seriously, what weakness did it have to make this trade necessary? Hard-throwing, dominant closer? Check. Devastating LOOGY? Check. Hard-throwing righty set-up guy? Check. Groundball-inducing, strikeout set-up guy? Check. Secondary LOOGY? Check. Long relief/mop up duty reliever? Check.

I guess I shouldn't get so riled up over this since it's not going to be a make-or-break move, and it affords the team the ability to send Mark Lowe down to get the amount of work he needs in order to get back to where he needs to be. But, dammit, it just doesn't make much sense. The way this team so easily gives up talent in order to bring in "veteran leadership" or to "build team chemistry" is just so utterly baffling, so completely forehead-smacking stupid.

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Phil, I'm glad you got to this one before I did, but I'll just add my two cents.

So I was sitting at Camden Yards tonight for the final game of the series, and before the game I saw that John Parrish was shaking the hands of the Orioles relievers while wearing a Seattle uniform. I first thought was that this was some kind of awful joke, but then reality sunk in. John Parrish was a Mariner. Very awkward moment there seeing a guy switch clubhouses like that, had to be weird for Parrish.

I can testify to how poor of a pitcher Parrish is, I've watched him for a few years with the Orioles since they are my hometeam. Basically what I've watching is him get blasted for multi-run innings. In fact he had a terrible performance just the other week against Boston, cost the O's the game. Other than this move not making sense because he sucks, it also doesn't make any sense at all to bring in a FOURTH, yes a FOURTH, left-handed reliever (Sherrill, O'Flaherty, Rowland-Smith, and now John Parish-able Food Item). Wait until you guys see him pitch, just wait.