The Garza/Bartlett Trade

Twins GM Bill Smith has taken plenty of heat for dealing Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett to the Rays for Delmon Young and Brendan Harris. It's been described as a rip-off and a failure among other things. I had disagreed with these assessments, but then I remembered something. In the deal, the Twins also swapped minor league pitcher Eduardo Morlan to acquire outfielder Jason Pridie. The young outfielder needed only 10 games to earn an entry in the airing of grievances. As you may recall, Pridie bobbled a routine outfield play to allow the tying run to score from first base with 2 outs in the ninth inning of a September contest at Rogers Centre against the Blue Jays which the Twins would eventually lose in extra innings. A few weeks later, the Twins and their fans were complaining about the coin flip which sent them to the Southside to break the 1st-place tie with the White Sox. It would be easy to blame the manager for putting Pridie into the situation. But I have a hard time believing that routine singles to right field are in different from all the routine singles he saw in AAA.