With Aardsma and Guti coming back soon from injuries, you need to dump two players from the active roster. As the article states, two weeks ago the foregone conclusion was that Saunders and either Leuke or Wilhemsen would go down to the minors (they still have options). But it's looking like they want to keep Saunders (who, while batting .227 leads the team in homers and actually has shown some pop in the bat) even though that'll mean a playing time crunch to Milton and Jack Cust. Cust would be the early candidate to go away, since he's not hitting, and it's not close. But you don't normally dump your "premiere" FA pick-ups 13 games into the season, even if you do bench them to put Adam Kennedy in the cleanup spot. Which prompted this warm-and-fuzzy quote from our skipper: Yikes. And while Leuke and Wilhemsen are rookies, they've both been pitching better than Chris Ray. But Ray doesn't have minor-league options, so you're basically giving him away to another team for free. Do we have enough assets to keep doing that?
Ackley is (I hope) coming up soon, and Triunfel may be around next year. If we get Rendon in the draft, that's a 2013 infield of Smoak, Ackley, Triunfel and Rendon. But most are saying that Triunfel can't stay at SS, so if he goes to 3rd we don't need Rendon. Bubba Starling look SUPER interesting to me.
WTH else are the M's spending money on? They need a franchise offensive player (or three!) in a big way. Paying Ichiro and Felix 40M combined isn't going to help the team if we don't spend 5-10M on high talent.