Don’t think I’ve gone all crazy…I only stole the “Win Now > Win Later (maybe)” subject line from the great Jonah Keri, who just so happened to have written on this very subject yesterday at Fangraphs. The past two weeks we’ve kind of bickered, debated, argued and made our cases for how the Mariners should deal with the possibility of being in a pennant race in 2011.

I’ve been very opposed to the Mariners making any “big” outside moves specifically to make a run at taking down the defending American League Champion Texas Rangers (I hate that they can say that…). But with reading Keri’s post it’s made me think, while not necessarily speaking about the Mariners, he made some solid points to consider.

Now understand that he was speaking in regards of the ESPN/Fangraphs draft so there are things within the article that you certainly can nit pick about. But I think at it’s core the article is good for us to review given the situation and the state of affairs with Seattle.

Given all the information now available to us, have we as baseball observers now reached a point where we too cavalierly eye a prospect’s ranking, come up with a peak WAR value, and project his career performance?

I spent two years writing about the team that probably places more emphasis on drafting, developing and keeping their prospects than any other. They understand than in an uneven playing field, you do what you can to survive and thrive. Since bidding for elite six-year major league free agents is a losing game for many teams, you go the other way.

But. Could the Rays have improved their chances of a World Series title if they’d traded for Cliff Lee or someone of that ilk last season? Sure. Would it have come at a very high cost in young talent, thereby carving into the lifeblood of the organization? Probably. Would it have been worth it anyway? Very possibly.

(cont)…

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