anonymous 1: The big question is whether the teams that hold these annual fire sales are doing anything to improve the team, other than dumping salary. I would say no.

Why? The Florida Marlins dumped their 1997 championship team and were able to win again in 2003. And don't forget the "salary-dump" trade of Matt Clement and Antonio Alfonseca to the Cubs, as many, including me, called it. All they got back was Dontrelle Willis. Plus Julian Tavarez, who helped them. Then they dumped their 2003 championship team and they're one of the most exciting, intriguing young teams in baseball, loaded with prospects and actually hanging around the fringes of the wild-card race in a salary-dump year.

The Minnesota Twins built their multiple division-title team of the first part of this decade with such trades. The Cleveland Indians dumped salary a few years ago and were able to gear back up with a team that looked like it would contend this year, though it just didn't work out like many, including me, predicted. That happens. But a lot of these types of deals do exactly what they're supposed to do.

James: The poor Phillies ... had to settle for middling prospects because they were stupid enough to give Abreu a terrible contract that only the Yankees were dumb enough to take on. Come on, King.

The Phillies aren't the point. There are always going to be poorly run teams, or even well-run teams that make the occasional mistake. The problem is that when that happens, the Yankees are almost uncontested in their ability to vulture in and take advantage.

and

Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for Wal-Mart. Where's the fun in that?

It was Red Smith who coined the famous line "Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel." Same thing at the time.

Tavarez didn't help the Marlins at all. He had a lousy year for them in '02, then left as a free agent.

Ianscot But at least the trading deadline in baseball includes teams making deals based on their needs -- unencumbered by arcane cap provisions that prevent 80% of all trades, or that require backups and "garbage management" toss-ins to make equivalent salaries on either side.

A-men.

bookworm: [None of Monday's trades look like deals that will win anybody a division, the way Sunday's Abreu-Cory Lidle deal looked for the Yankees.]

You really think so? ... Obviously, the Yanks have been hurting with two productive outfielders on the DL, so Abreu will shore up right field, but with the way Randy Johnson, their supposed ace, has been pitching, it's completely up in the air if they'll win their division or the wild card.

Yes. I think so. And yes of course it's up in the air. But you don't not win the division because your "supposed ace" isn't pitching well. You don't win because somebody else wins more games than you.

Right now, with Johnson pitching poorly and Matsui/Sheffield on the shelf, the Yankees are one game back of the Red Sox and five and a half games ahead of the Blue Jays in the East.

On Sunday, the Yankees added one of the top on-base men in the game and a starting rotation who's about a 3-runs-per-9-innings imrpovement on the guys they had been running out there on the fifth day. And subtracted precisely nothing. On Monday they added a solid right-handed bat, subtracting one of those guys who was so much worse than the pitcher they just added.

Meanwhile, the Blue Jays and Red Sox did nothing. Obviously anything can happen over the next two months with hot streaks, slumps and injuries, but if the Yankees were roughly even with the Red Sox over the first 105 games or so, as the standings indicate, and they just improved at three positions without cost, how are they not now the favorites to win the division?

I just want to clarify, because a few letter-writers have taken Clemens to task for wanting to be traded to a contender, or complaining, etc.

Unless I read it wrong, and I don't think I did, Stark was speaking for himself, saying HE (Stark) thought it was wrong of the Astros not to trade Clemens. Clemens himself has not, as far as I know, expressed an opinion on the matter.