[Redeye fly]

I may be wrong, but I don't think that trade had a lot to do with Krivsky losing his job. I don't remember the timing of everything, but I think with Bob C's St. Louis connections, the writing was always on the wall from the time Jocketty joined the organization.

I say too that what Walt did was not at all a bad baseball move when it was made. An organization that had notoriously bad starting pitching and counted as recent past staff "aces" the likes of Paul Wilson and Jimmy Haynes sold high on an injury prone, past drug abusing outfielder for a potential ace type arm. Volquez appeared in the All Star Game that year. No one could have predicted Tommy John surgery or anything to come after that.

People who criticize the trade lament the now, and rightfully so. But while general managers have to look toward not just the present but also the future when making trades, it's almost always a crap shoot. Heck, we can still lament the useless trade with the Nationals if we want as it did nothing for us that year. Majewski was awful, Clayton was just a warm body. But Felipe Lopez and Kearns are nowhere to be seen in Washington and we have gotten some value out of Bray, who a lot of people thought was the real asset in the trade to begin with. So maybe when it's all said and done, we "won" that one.

We lost the Hamilton trade, but that doesn't mean it was a horrible one to make at the time. Like I said, Volquez was an All Star and he and Cueto made our pitching staff intriguing and exciting that year. Hamilton wants to rake, good for him. I moved on from it all in 2008 and haven't looked back since, because there's no point to.