Kenny Williams has just Kenny Williams'ed again. Just days after telling the world that he wasn't rebuilding, and was probably done making trades, he trades Carlos Quentin away for two prospects. The prospects that he's gotten aren't really anything special, so this is probably a bit of a salary dump for Kenny. They do have guys like Dayan Viciedo and Alejandro de Aza who need positions, and guys like Adam Dunn and Alex Rios who are still getting paid a shitload of money and aren't likely to take a backseat for either guy. Basically, moving Quentin allows them to pick up a couple of prospects to throw in to their league-worst farm system, and creates an equal number of positions and players to fill them in terms of 1B/OF/DH. I think it's pretty safe to just let Kenny Williams go ahead and do whatever the fuck he thinks is right on whatever given day, whether that be trading players for middling prospects or extending your best trade chip. Kevin Goldstein of baseballprospectus.com was just on a radio station in Chicago, and compared KW's offseason to the mood swings of a manic-depressive.
The other side of this coin looks at the Padres, and just what the fuck they're thinking. They gave up two (meh) prospects for a mediocre, injury-prone outfielder just a couple of weeks after trading their best pitcher away for prospects. The Padres don't really have any reason to want to acquire Quentin unless they're trying to use him as a means to flip prospects for prospects at the trade deadline. Quentin offers an upgrade for a pretty shitty lineup in SD, but I don't really see any reason to go out and acquire him and add $6MM to their payroll, especially when they don't have any hope of contention this year. Of course, they just added Huston Street for no real reason, so who knows? And of course, Petco.
The Jays were briefly linked to Quentin, but based on the return that KW got, it doesn't look like they were all that interested. I'm wondering if other teams wanted CWS to pay for some of Quentin's salary, because frankly this seems like an underwhelming return based on the perceived interest in Quentin earlier this summer.
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