As an Indians fan, it killed me for us to let him go to Rule 5. Barton was a personal favorite who I think might be able to pull a few Jason Bay peak years out of his bag one day. Its gotten worse as we've watched Jason Michaels, who should have been dropped off on the Mets or someone, failing miserably even at the one skill he was supposed to have hitting LH pitching. I'm still a big believer in Shapiro but he shouldn't have stood pat on the offense this year. At worst we should have taken parts that were at least somewhat valuable like Marte and Barton and packaged them for Quentin instead of using them as inefficiently as we have. I'm still holding out hope that someone is going to be desperate enough to offer something for Byrd so we can use or depth in pitching and AAA outfielders to improve a pretty suspect offensive ballclub.

Michaels has such cool hair though

Barton has cool hair too.

how do tribe fans feel about the crisp-marte trade?

how do tribe fans feel about the crisp-marte trade?

Happy we got Kelly Shoppach.

It's nice to see Barton playing well - he's always seemed like a player I'd root for - but it's frustrating as hell that a team that knew full well it had a massive problem at both corner outfield positions let him go while keeping Brad Snyder and Wyatt Toregas on the 40-man.

Yeah, I know, Toregas is a great defensive catcher. He's also a complete zero with the bat who's now 25 years old and hasn't hit a lick above High A. He'll be lucky to grow up to be Jose Molina.

i've become a big fan of him. finally, a player smarter than moe berg?

I'll never get tired of rapidly skimming Passan's weird human-interest pieces on Yahoo.

So is Barton Bannister's NL counterpart as the nerd who plays baseball? What is it with Brian B.'s?