no trade claws

The Mariners shopped their stars, but reports say that management was too greedy, so the only talent we axed was our premier situational lefty, Arthur Rhodes, and the only prospect a future investment named Gaby Hernandez. Call it a Claw Crane effort.

Here are a few links to trade deadline analyses, certain to be obsolete by the end of the decade.

1. Geoff Baker, The Seattle Times, breaks down the one move the M's made, and the four biggest that they didn't.

2. Dave of USS Mariner hands out grades.

Pelekoudas gets an A for the Rhodes trade - he did quite well. He gets an incomplete for the Washburn and Ibanez situations, as both are still somewhat unresolved. The Mariners need to keep trying to move Washburn, putting him on waivers tomorrow and lowering their demands, now that the Yankees called their bluff. If they can dump him before end of August, not dealing him today won’t matter. If they keep him for the rest of the season and risk getting stuck with him, he gets an F for not taking advantage of dumping Wash when he could.

3. Jayson Stark, ESPN, gives another overall assessment, and it ain't pretty.

How could Ibanez still be there? How could Jarrod Washburn still be there? How could one-third of that roster not have been traded in the past couple of weeks?

"I'm cutting them a little slack," one rival GM said. "They're leader-less right now."

True, they have an interim GM (the well-liked Lee Pelekoudas) and a confusing ownership arrangement and an uncertain chain of command. But they angered teams they spoke to with what were widely viewed as outrageous demands. And the bottom line is that this deadline represented a lost renovation opportunity in the middle of an already-lost season. And how many lost opportunities can clubs like this afford?

Well, since the Mariners are about to pay $100 million to lose 100 games, maybe they can afford a lot more.