Boonie

So, I'm sitting at my desk yesterday and up pops a trade offer from $5 Punjab offering me Bret Boone for Brian Lawrence. This is the kind of deal that makes you wonder if there is bad news out about Boone that you don't know about. (Not to suggest that Barmak would make a shady offer like that, because he absolutely wouldn't.) But, the reality is that Bret Boone is an All-Star second baseman, and was Barmak's second AL draft pick, and Brian Lawrence was a $4 pitcher that I previously got by trading J-Hate Lyle Overbay.

Of course, I accepted the offer. And talked about with Barmak, and I get why he did it. I assume that some other owners are going to say I "rooked" Barmak, and as far as pure stats go, I just might have. But it's a particularly interesting facet of fantasy baseball why this deal can happen in the first place.

Barmak is in first place. As far as pitching goes, he's leading in Wins, second in ERA and third in WHIP. His argument is, he needs to seal those categories up and perhaps increase his lead in the other categories. [The argument against this is that Lawrence may have been outperforming himself in the last month when I've owned him. Certainly Barmak hopes that is not the case.]

In my case, Marcus Giles has been on the DL for over a month and while Scottie Hairston is a nice fill-in, Bret Boone is Bret Boone. Unless - and this is a big if - he's injured and not telling anyone about it (like Shawn Green last year!), he HAS to do better. And because he has more power and more speed than Hairston, it's a slamdunk for me.

Besides, I'm in 9th place. Exactly what am I afraid of damaging here? Rozen is really far down in 10th place, not that it's out of my range...but I'd like to THINK I've hit a floor with my team. If and when Delgado and Giles come back, I'll still have four good starters (Oswalt, Halladay, Maddux and Carpenter) and an excess of players. A nice problem to have.

A note -- I previously traded Al Leiter for Hee Seop Choi and Brian Fuentes. This was for two reasons - one, I needed another option at 1st, with Delgado STILL out, and I also need insurance if/when Shawn Chacon loses his job as the closer. It's not a great deal for me - the next day, Rozen traded Jon Phil Nevin for David Wells, and clearly I'd rather have Nevin than Choi - but combined with this deal with Barmak, I think I'm doing pretty good.