As for Ibanez…he’s always been overrated to me. He had a career year last year, but when you look at his previous stats, 06 sticks out like a sore thumb. Had 06 been a contract year for him, I can only imagine what what kind of money this guy would have gotten from another team. IMO we should’ve used him as trade bait last year for some damn pitching.

I’d also like to trade Jose Vidro for Travis Hafner, HoRam for Santana, and Jeff Weaver for a case of fine Trappist beer.

Yeah, fair enough, but my thinking is the entire “what if the M’s gut out a playoff appearance this year” question changes things. There really isn’t any other way about it.

World Series titles aren’t awarded on GM style points, or even just on building a great team in the regular season, or else we wouldn’t have had the 2006, 2005, 2003, 2002 or 2001 World Champions that we did, Billy Beane arguably has a ring or two, and John Schuerholz has a LOT of rings instead of just one, and the Marlins probably should have nothing.

Realistically, what you should be hoping for is for the M’s to make the playoffs, win it all… and THEN Bavasi gets fired anyways because the onwership group becomes masters of sabremetric enlightenment and realizes the season was a fluke, and Bavasi still sucks as a GM, and Hargrove’s still a crappy manager. This is all “if my aunt had balls” kind of speculation anyway, so why not?

You’re setting up a straw man. For the sake of argument, let’s say winning the world series is completely, 100% luck. That puts our chances of pulling that out our arses at 1/8 (and I don’t think anyone truly believes that). The chances of us losing in the first or second round are much much greater and would likely guarantee the rest of your first scenario playing out exactly the way you described, which basically means we get one long shot chance at the expense of having to wait 3-4 years before we get a GM in here who can actually help the team.

As for your second option, as Scraps said, I don’t think a smart GM would need to blow this team up for us to be competitive as soon as 2009 and maybe even 2008.

Obviously, this is all highly speculative, but I’m just trying to say I’d hate to sacrifice our team quality over the next few years for the immediate gratification of what I’d call a very long shot.

I am cheering for the Mariners tonight. If they lose, I will have the small compensation of feeling that it is another step toward getting the team better management.