if i'm tampa, i explore trading everyone BUT crawford. and if i have young "can't-miss" pitching prospects, i would hold onto them. baseball business can be so weird sometimes.

The Tampa situation is oddly similar to the Florida Marlins -- except, of course, that the Rays don't win a World Series every few years.

It's hard to see a Crawford trade as a positive for the franchise; he's young, likely to improve, and relatively inexpensive. I can think of a couple rationales for a deal:

1. Management is convinced that Crawford has peaked early, and they need to trade him now. Players with high BAs and low OBAs do tend to have shorter careers than players with a good command of the strike zone.

2. They can get one hell of a deal for him -- similar to, say, the Josh Beckett trade of last winter.

Otherwise, Crawford is exactly the kind of player the Rays need to hold onto if they're serious about building a winning team.

As a Tigers fan I don't want to see Verlander traded for Crawford, but Crawford is just the type of player the Tigers love- low on base %.

If the Devil Rays could get a new stadium for him, they should trade Crawford.

re: White Sox trading for Carl Crawford

I would agree that the White Sox trading for Carl Crawford is a good scenario.

The White Sox have badly needed table setters this past year.

Carl Crawford may have the defects you assign to him, but he is the kind of exciting player who can hit for extra bases as well as having speed on the bases. He is MORE of a leadoff type hitter than is Scott Podsednik and hitting in front of Thome, Dye & Konerko, one would have to think Crawford would score 120 runs.

Even if his OBA and other numbers went down in Chicago, they wouldn't be as poor as Podsednik's. Jimmy Rollins has shown that if you can maintain an OBA of .333, steal 90% of your bases and steal at least 30 a year, and hit 20 or more homers and 30 or more doubles a year, you can be a really effective and even a destructive leadoff hitter without having a .375 OBA. Rollins Slugging % is in the high .400s. His OPS is always nearly .800. or above .800.

Trading for Crawford, given the pitching depth of Chicago, should be a priority offseason.

--art kyriazis, philly

Noah Lowry, maybe? The Giants are certainly starved for young position players and have some young pitchers.

I'd be tempted to do it if I were the Mets and it was Humber or Pelfrey but not both (especially if the Rays would take Zambrano back). A Crawford-Beltran-Milledge outfield, combined with Wright and Reyes, is a tremendous offensive and defensive core, and Crawford's cheap enough compared to Floyd that you would be saving payroll that could be spent on more proven pitching. I think Crawford will add more power as he ages, and even without great OBPs a 1-2 punch of him and Reyes would drive teams batty, particularly teams like the Braves with an offense-first catcher.

Actually, Crawford's pretty much guaranteed an All-Star Game slot as long as he stays with the Rays.

i'd LOVE to have him back home here in houston