The venerable Bob Smizik had a nice little post on his blog today about Rafael Soriano, and how the Rays got him for Jesse Chavez.

He says, after some praise of Soriano,

The Atlanta Braves traded Soriano to Tampa this off-season in exchange for Jesse Chavez. That’s the same Chavez the Pirates sent to Tampa a month earlier for Aki Iwamura. How's that for talent evaluation:  For Chavez, the Pirates got Iwamura and the Rays got one of the best closers in baseball.

Can someone please stop this man? Honestly. Yes, the Iwamura experiment has been a disaster, but at the time this looked like a good trade, and I didn't here Smizik yelling and screaming that Bucs should've traded Chavez for Soriano.

As for the talent evaluation part...I think it's clear that AI has/had a decent amount of talent, for whatever reason (injury, regression, i dunno) it hasn't shown in PGH. Further, a good talent evaluator will tell you that serviceable, even quite good, closers are a dime a dozen. Dotel, for instance, has done just fine.

An above average (or even average) 2B is much more valuable than a good closer. To bash on deals like this in hindsight is petty and counterproductive. I don't know why I continue to read Smizik. I need to stop.