My biggest problem with Cafardo is that he bases whole pieces of his column on what may or may not be faulty suppositions. In the past there's been "what will they do with a Bard who's chomping on the bit for the closing role?" - without any real basis for that being the case. And the recurring, "obviously the Sox are going to get/Padres are going to trade Adrian Gonzalez - is the the time it's going to happen?" - when, of course, it just may be that the Padres don't trade Gonzalez.
Rather than investigate the prime piece of the discussion (quotes from Theo/Tito/Bard on what is future is for the closing role) (quotes from the Padres/Gonzalez), he investigates a possible future.
Maybe it's just my taste, but I would much rather have reporting on the reality of a situation rather than reporting supporting a prognostication's outcome, even the best of which only comes true maybe half the time.
Today, we get "there haven't been many waiver trades this year/will there be more soon?" - when we don't have any foundation for the central premise, "there haven't been many waiver trades this year," so why the fuck are we postulating about what the eventual pick up in waiver trades will be? Rather than investigate the number of trades by Aug. 14 in years past, we just get some mealy-mouthed language about there being five trades so far and "That number seems small", which may be because "The races are tighter this year, so most of the activity will come later rather than sooner."
Were there fewer teams in the race last year? Were there more waiver trades? I have no idea - but I'd like the person whose media I'm consuming to go look it up for me, since that's what Cafardo's actual job is.
But let's see: This year, there are five teams total within five games of a division lead, and three teams within 10 games of the wild card in the AL, seven within 10 games in the NL.
Last year, there were six teams total within five games of a division lead, as of Aug. 15, and five teams within 10 games of the wild card in the AL, seven within 10 games in the AL.
So, actually, that piece of reasoning gleaned from "one National League GM" - whooo! can't believe he stuck his neck out like that, even anonymously! - doesn't have any basis in reality. It's exactly the same, or maybe fewer teams in the race.
Then there's the reasoning from Cafardo himself: "Another reason for the lack of activity could be that teams are focusing instead on trying to sign their draft picks before tomorrow’s deadline."
Did that date change this year? Wouldn't that always be something GMs are focusing on at this time of year and therefore this lack of waiver trades would be something that would always happen in early August?
Which leads to another flawed supposition: "others have been slow to [put players through waivers], including teams that actually have players other teams want. One of them is the Blue Jays, who hadn’t put coveted lefthander Scott Downs on trade waivers as of Friday."
The supposition is that: Of course, if you have players teams want, you're going to make them available to them. When, in fact, maybe those teams just don't want to trade those players. Maybe the Blue Jays want to keep Scott Downs. Maybe they think they're going to be good next year (they just extended Romero) and they know middle relief is hard to come by and they want to keep Downs for themselves.
Why can't he just tell me about stuff that's actually happened that I don't know about because I don't spend my entire day talking about and reporting on baseball. Can't he point out good performances by up-and-coming stars that I should be paying attention to? Can't he tell me about something that I couldn't just come up with by my own wild speculating?
All of his columns seem to involve him coming up with an idea for something that might happen, and then asking anonymous sources about what it would mean if that did happen. Which leaves the reader completely devoid of any real information: "What, an anonymous GM said something might happen, or it might not?!? Holy fuck!"
He's just so bad it drives me crazy. The other hockey, football, and basketball columns are actually pretty damn good.