Dear Diary,

OK.  I'm a little bit dismayed at the playing both sides of the coin thing that many posters are doing lately.  People keep saying that we need to have a youth movement and then saying we need to trade all these young players.  A (over the top) typical post has been something along the lines of:

For this youth movement to work we should a) trade Duncan (26) and Reyes (25) for Jon Garland (27) or Buehrle (28).  Then sign Schilling (40), Glavine (41), and Eckstein (32) for one more year.  Then lets trade away Ankiel (27) and Ludwick (28) for a shortstop that will sit behind Eckstein (which won't let Ryan play at all) who is only in A ball and showing some promise.  Meanwhile, to fill the vacated 3 spots in the outfield we should sign Kenny Lofton (40) and Dave Roberts (35) if we can't re-up Taguchi's (38) contract.  Maybe play Speez (34) a bit in LF.

Now, I know noone in their right mind would want all of that together, but I am failing to see any of the logic behind some posters' remarks about a youth movement when they are making the average age of the team go from like 2nd in the league to first by a large margin.

OK, rant over.

stlfan