Sitting pretty

Last week was agony at times, wondering whether Roy Halladay was worth giving up Kyle Drabek, or whether Victor Martinez was worth giving up Clay Buchholz. Or whether either of our teams would make a foolish decision about the future that wouldn't even pay off this year.

Ultimately, our teams got the two best players in Martinez and Cliff Lee who moved by July 31 (although Matt Holliday might disagree) without giving up their most coveted prospects and are in good positions to return to the playoffs this year while remaining perennial threats for the next several.

We are pleased.

This SoxandPhils headline on a Tom Verducci column summed up our trading deadline nicely:

Red Sox, Phillies put organizational depth on display

In an era when young players under control are valued more and more, Philadelphia and Boston won the week because of they could draw on fertile farm systems without running them dry. It's a lesson for the Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Mets of the world: player development is a key currency in the baseball realm.

And, as we later learned, our teams were prepared to cash in that currency in other deals. Ruben Amaro said so, but there's only speculation as to whom the Phillies were pursuing. Theo Epstein said less, but there are reports he was pursuing a whopper. He offered the Mariners a king's ransom (their choice of five from RHP Clay Buchholz, RHP Daniel Bard, RHP Justin Masterson, LHP Nick Hagadone, RHP Michael Bowden, LHP Felix Doubront, OF Josh Reddick and SS Yamaico Navarro) for King Felix Hernandez.

I'm intrigued at the thought of Hernandez on the Red Sox, but I'd be scared to make that deal. Although, Theo had the guts to trade away Nomar Garciaparra and Manny Ramirez and wound up with a better team.

SoxandPhils should have been in the bibliography

I read a couple more chapters today of The Rocket that Fell to Earth. It was the part that describes how Roger Clemens made the leap from an awful human being to a cheating drugged-up loser in the mid-1990s, thanks to some help from Jose Canseco.

As he looked around the clubhouse, Clemens surely noticed that he was surrounded by aging and adequate players. What he also noticed was that one older player who seemed to be getting bigger, stronger and better was Jose Canseco.

The book describes how Canseco tried hard to become a B-list celebrity with a fling with Madonna, a 1-900 line and mansions on each coast.

It also noted the 1995 Red Sox yearbook, whose juiced-up contents was duly noted on this blog a year ago. Here's what Jeff Pearlman wrote:

On the cover of the 1995 Red Sox Yearbook, Canseco posed in a black tank top, arms folded, biceps popping (wrote Mark Newman in the Sporting News, "It looks less like a team yearbook than, say, the latest issue of Playgirl").

OK, Newman beat us by more than a decade, but we were the first with the steroid link. And, unfortunately, this is not the cover shot, but one from inside the yearbook. But I think you still get the picture of what he was talking about.

Today's news: Red Sox are off; Phillies play late in San Diego. ... Gannett's furloughs don't exempt sports baseball beat writers. ... Jerry Remy sounds good in an audio Tweet released today. ... Todd Zolecki, not furloughed, reports: Raul Ibanez is now second in All-Star voting; Ryan Howard was co-player of the week; Kyle Drabek was promoted to Double-A Reading; and you shouldn't trust a Tweet from a Phillie other than Chad Durbin or Jamie Moyer.