Damn, the Red Sox are close to trading Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford and Nick Punto to the Dodgers for P prospect Allan Webster, IF/OF Jerry Sands, P Rubby de la Rosa, IF Ivan DeJesus, and 1B James Loney.

A few days ago, if you would have asked me I would have said that Bobby V is a goner after the year.  Now, they've sent most of the malcontents out of town.  Shoppach got traded a week ago to the Mets.  They fired pitching coach Bob McClure who was supposedly the leak that gave the info about the players bitching about Bobby V to upper management.

And they get rid of all that money owed to Crawford and Beckett.  I think they're probably supposed to send some cash to LA.  But I wouldn't be suprised if LA just took the contracts in exchange for sending less prospects to the Dodgers.

Yeah, they got less for Adrian Gonzalez but they had to include two guys who have very little value and a lot cash owed in Beckett and Crawford.  It gives them a whole bunch of money to play with and I think Matsuzaka comes off the payroll as well.  Can't see them going after Greinke in FA though, it just seems like a bad match.

They did get a couple of interesting pitching prospects in the trade in Webster and de la Rosa.  Sands has some skills as well.  Loney is useless though.

It will be a really interesting offseason for Boston that's for sure.

And Mark Grace is going to rehab since he got popped for a DUI last night.  I hope he gets his life straightened out.  He's pretty entertaining as a color analyst.  And he had a really good MLB career.

Close to September and I'll just give some random thoughts:

AL East--NYY already has a spot in hand.  The shocker is Baltimore is still in contention.  The Rays are the hottest team in MLB.  I suspect at worst they'll get one WC spot.  Jays have been wrecked by injuries and the Red Sox are a complete mess (more on them later).

AL West--Texas has the division in hand.  Oakland is still in it and picked up Stephen Drew yesterday.  While the Angels aren't out of it, they are sinking fast(wild card spot).  Seattle has played well and could catch the Angels for third.

AL Central--Two teams--Tigers and White Sox will battle it out.  I think the loser has a good chance of snagging the 2nd WC spot.  The other teams are just playing out the string.  I will say that Cleveland should have dealt a bunch of players near the deadline.  Also, the Jimmez deal from last year looks like a disaster.

AL East--Two teamer with the Nationals and Braves.  Braves got a pretty good lead for the first WC spot.  Marlins did a good job with their July fire sale acquisitons and Stanton is healthy again and hit some absolute bombs on their West Coast road trip.  Phillies are in wait for next year mode and to be honest they have a really short window to compete.

NL Central--The Reds have a healthy lead in the division.  The Pirates and Cardinals are fighting for the 2nd WC.  I have a hard time being totally optimistic about the Pirates chances.  The pitching has reverted to norm and McCutchen has cooled down considerably.  Also, I've realized that Clint Hurdle is an absolute dumbass with some of his manegerial decisions.  The Cards are a weird bunch to figure out.  By all metrics they should have a better record, but they end up losing a lot of games they should win.  They lost a game last against the Pirates last week when they Pirates had zero RBI.  Cubs are playing for next year and to be honest they might be an interesting team to watch because they have a lot guys up who figure into next year's plans (Rizzo, Castro, Jackson and maybe Vitters).  Brewers at least got a decent return on the Greinke trade and Astros are playing to avoid 110+ losses.

NL West--Dodgers and Giants, and Dbacks lurking.  Clearly the Dodgers division to win now with the Cabrera suspension.  The real question is whether or not the Giants have enough pitching to withstand the Cabrera suspension.

If I were to guess today:

AL East--NYY
AL Central--White Sox
AL West--Rangers
AL WC--Rays and Tigers

NL East--Nationals
NL West--Dodgers
NL Central--Reds
NL WC--Braves and Cardinals.

I'll write about the Red Sox, Angels and the Cabrera suspension later on as those topics will take up a lot of space.

They're also developing a Saturday morning cartoon show.  To be honest, I don't have a problem with them going to a less hardcore route for the matches. 

What I do have a huge issue with is the fact that the matches and characters bore the shit out of me.  I caught the last two matches of Summerslam and they were fair.  I mean none of the matches were awful but at the same point they were just matches.  There was nothing special about them.  You know there's a problem with your booking/writing when the heel of one of the matches gets cheered (CM Punk) and the face gets showered with boos (Cena).  Or the fact that the fans chant "you tapped out" to the face (HHH) of the main event.

I did find it interesting that Daniel Bryan and CM Punk got the two biggest pops of the night.

You know you have a problem when Paul Heyman is one of the top heat drawers in your company.

For those who watch regulary:  do people give a shit about twitter or this tout thing they've been hyping?  Seems like a waste of time if they don't improve or add to the ratings.

On the Linda McMahon senate run--at least Vince is smart enough to only blow 10-15 million this time around instead of the 40-50 million that he wasted last time.

I rarely watch now but only do so on occasion out of habit.  Once football season starts I'll just start to read the results.  I knew it was a bad sign for my wrestling viewing habits when I opted to watch a shitty SNF game instead of a WWE ppv.

And if the material were better I wouldn't be bothered by two shows.  They've also extended RAW to three hours which is a major time commitment even if you are a hardcore fan.

Cosign this.  Lawler's been friggin unlistnable for YEARS.  I loved him during the late 90s-early part of the decade but he's been phoning it since then.

Actually, Linda's political aspirations are only a portion of the WWE money drain.  They've spent millions on trying to launch the WWE network but that seems to be in question as they have already been turned by Direct TV (or Dish Network.  WWE network was supposed to debut this year but that has been pushed back again.

They continue to dump money into WWE Films even when that division isn't very profitable at all.

In 2010 WWE stock was worth $18.64, a few weeks ago it dropped to $7.86.  That's a lot of money to lose.

Don't get me wrong, WWE won't be going out of business anytime soon but there are some major red flags here.  Personally, I don't know why they just don't can the WWE films division and just spend more time on money on the DVD releases.  They have the rights to most  of the wrestling footage.  They're sitting on a goldmine in old NWA/WCW tape libraries.

More trades:

Hanley Ramirez to LA Dodgers for P Nathan Eovaldi and minor league pitcher Scott McGough.

LHP Wandy Rodriguez to the Pirates for AA OF Robbie Grossman, and minor league pitchers Rudy Owens and Colton Cain.  Pirates also receive cash.

The Ramirez move could backfire on the Dodgers.  They took on all his contract (around 37 million) and his performance has been down since the start of 2010 season.  Defense has always been an issue for him but his bat always made up for it.  He'll be better than Juan Uribe but I think the Marlins lucked out when they got someone to take that contract.  Interesting rebuild on the fly by the Marlins as they acquired a bunch of prospects from the Tigers for Infante and Sanchez and they got something for Hanley.  Josh Johnson could also be moved but they are asking a lot for him and I think he'll stay.

I like the Rodriguez trade for the Pirates.  They gave up a descent prospect in Grossman but they needed a pitcher since some of the starters have been faltering.  PNC Park favors left handed pitchers as well.  They got cash too which makes it something like a 2 year 13 million dollars that they'll be paying for Rodriguez.  That's pretty much the average price for a decent starting pitcher.  I hope they grab another corner outfielder or a first baseman by Tuesday but the prices for position players have been high.  I wouldn't mind Victorino from the Phillies.

Ryan Dempster really fucked the Cubs by essentially blocking that trade to the Braves.  Now the Dodgers are lowballing the Cubs because of this.  What's even more dickish is that he told the Cubs that he didn't really have any objections towards going to the Braves.  Garza might not start again until after the trade deadline.  I still they can still trade him at worst in the offseason but he would have made a nice consolation prize for a team that didn't trade for Zack Greinke.

Phillies sign Cole Hamels to a 6 year contract worth 144 million.  It doesn't look like Cliff Lee will be going anywhere either.  They've been talking about trading Jimmy Rollins or Hunter Pence and that makes sense since they have to reduce payroll somewhere.

Last note on Ichiro, it will be really interesting to see where he ends up in 2013.  He is 400+ hits short of 3,000 hits and I don't think he retires if he's that close to the magic number.  I could see a west coast team giving him a one year deal.