I play in a standard points league, so hits, runs, rbis, SBs etc count as positive while K's, errors, GDIPs, CS count as negatives. We can keep 8 guys, and right now I have 6 solid keepers, one of those being Matt Holliday. I have an offer on the table that would give me Ichiro and Rios for Holliday and I'm inclined to take it, but I'm torn. If I only keep 6, then I get 2 picks before everyone who keeps 8. So esentially I'd be trading Holliday, plus one pre draft pick for Ichiro and Rios. Plus for some reason I envision Holliday going to the Red Sox after this year and we have no limit on how long we can keep players. Thoughts? Should I take it?

It's a tough choice, but I wouldn't take it. Holliday is still the best hitter of those two and he's not going to be in Oakland for long. If he ends up on the Yankees in July, you're going to want to kill someone.

Thanks for the response. A deal to the Yanks or Saux, would definitely have me blowing a gasket.

I guess its all about keeper versus winning. If I'm making a move to help me win it this year, I take Ichiro and Rios over just Holliday. The 2007 version of Rios makes this a slam dunk, but the 36 year old version of Ichiro and the potential for the 2008 version of Rios makes it tough. Outfield seems like it is going to be relatively deep this year, so keeping Holliday and drafting the best available outfielder could be the best keeper move and help even out Holliday with the combo of the other two.

I don't usually advocate giving up a guy in a 2 for 1, but I'll have to make an exception in this case. I think Rios will have stats that are very similar to Holliday at the end of this season. Grey's predictions have Rios at 85/25/90/.295/20 and Holliday at 90/22/105/.310/12. The Jays' lineup should be better than the As', so I could see the R/RBI numbers being the same, in which case the 10 extra steals make up for the 15 points of BA.

I'm assuming Ichiro is significantly better than the pick you'd get, I guess it depends who's out there. If the best pick is someone like Raul Ibanez, then you've gotta make this trade. If the best pick is Curtis Granderson, then maybe you hang on to Holliday.

Don't give up a top tier stud like Holliday for the chance of having a slightly better outfield just for one year.


Thinking of Holliday with the Yankees makes me want to kill a puppy or something, but there's a good chance that is going to happen, and then Holliday is going to very good for a very long time. You can't say that about either Rios or Ichiro.

We haven't committed to keepers yet, however I'm predicting that the best available OFs will probably be Wells, Ilbanez, Hart etc. So I guess its worth looking at this like a Holliday / Wells for Ichiro / Rios deal.

My thought is that if this is Rios circa 2007, this is a good trade. Do you guys think that Rios will return to middle 20 homerun numbers?

In our scoring system last year, Holliday pulled down 3.65 points per game (3.30 away from Coors), while Rios was a 2.8 and Ichiro was a 2.94. I believe in 2007 Rios was closer to a 3.3. I think Wells, Ilbanez etc could easily get 2.8, so I'd stick with Holliday, but if Rios gets back to the 3.3 range then I'd want to take it. The nice thing about Ichiro is that while 2.94 wasn't amazing in our league, he played all 162 games so there isn't any monkeying around with backup outfielders trying to make up the extra games.

I just got a second offer....

Vernon Wells / Chipper / Conor Jackson

for Holliday

I realize Chipper is injury prone, but Wright, Ramirez, A-Rod, Longoria, Miggy, Youk will all be kept so the best options at 3rd will be Aktins, Chipper, and Zimmerman. Thoughts?

I think I like the Ichiro and Rios offer better, but may not take either.

Ichiro and Rios offer is still better.