Diamond Trading

By The Common Man



Ripped from the notebook of Bill Smith

 The Common Man has argued in the past that he believes the Twins are an inherently irrational organization.   Part of that is their unfortunate tendency to start down a path (trade Santana, trade Hardy, carry Butera, start Punto) and build organizational momentum around this notion, to the point where they can't stop themselves, even if they should realize their decision is a bad one. They become invested in ideas or courses of action until, no matter what, they accomplish their goal. It’s the baseball equivalent of putting the team into a steep nose-dive and being unable to pull up at the last minute. Or deciding you want a certain car, and not caring that you’re paying 20% over blue-book value. 

Once again, this seems to be the case with the Twins and the Scott Diamond-Billy Bullock trade. According to Aaron Gleeman, “there are reports about the Twins wanting Diamond so much that they nearly traded up in the Rule 5 draft to make sure they got him and reports about how they've since grown to like him even more this spring.“ the Twins had fallen in love with Diamond’s grounder-inducing/homer-killing tendencies, and decided that, come hell or high water, he was going to be a Twin. Price didn’t matter. There simply was no way the Twins were going to allow Diamond to go back to the Braves; they had simply invested too much time and energy into him. It's enough to make TCM want to start a poker game just to get Bill Smith involved.