The shameful Bartolo Colon trade: Strictly from the Hated Yankees end, this does not look great. I’ve been a fan of Osuna in the past, but in recent years he has been neither healthy nor outstandingly effective (1.36 baserunners/IP last season, which is uuuuugly). The Yanks could probably use 6 or 7 starters this year, given the age of the staff (granted they have 8, but Hitchcock stinks). I don’t know much about the prospect. Then again, the Yankees achieved their top objective, which was keeping Colon out of Fenway.
The Expos got totally raped here. Liefer’s a decent lefthanded bat, although his career numbers are not that great, and Biddle has a good arm, but this isn’t close to equal value, and there’s no high-upside prospect to give a fig leaf of this being anything but a salary dump. El Duque is old, injury-prone, and was never a #1 starter; I think he can still pitch, but he’s thrown 200 innings just once for the Yanks. If he started 26 games, 155 IP with a 3.60 ERA for the Yanks, he’d probably go 11-6; with Montreal, that will be worth 6 or 7 wins. Colon, by contrast, is a horse; he averaged nearly 110 pitches a start and threw 130 pitches in a game twice last season. He’s worth something to the Yankees, who have depth and will clearly be a contender this year. Montreal, without Colon, will not. He’s of little more use to them than Irabu and Yoshii were.
For the White Sox, Christmas came late – trade one half-decent reliever, one half-decent young pitcher, and one corner infielder who’s 28 and never had an everyday job, and get one of baseball’s best pitchers in return.