[hiaspire]

True, but whether they could have been traded for YEARS AGO is also irrelevant to a team making decisions to improve TODAY. There are no time machines.

Bonds- Was very avalable as a free agent, and could've been had for less then Lee.
Yes he could have with much higher risk and much less recent performance. As I said, you sign Bonds to a long-term deal and I'll sign Lee to a long-term deal and we'll see how that works out in the end. Intelligent teams like Houston also look for guys who can fit into their situation. They don't get the loud-mouth trouble-makers. Most of their guys have been down-to-earth and fit their cohesive unit well, as Carlos Lee will in coming home. How things fit for your unique situation and the image of your club to its fans is also very important from a franchise perspective.

There certainly are good players you could trade all your prospects to acquire, though, but that is also a huge price to pay. For a team in Houston's position, that also doesn't make much sense. They want to win today with a veteran team, but know that these guys will be aging and they will need to have a pipeline of talent for afterwards. Spending money on improvements makes much more sense for a team in that situation, especially if you are using money that was repurposed from other expenses that have moved along.

Would you trade all your good young players for Matt Holliday who only hits .256-.280 away from Coors with vastly reduced power and .313-.330 OBP in other parks? Or sign a proven hitter outside of Coors Field who consistently gets the job done and allows you to also keep your young talent? To me, that would be a no-brainer for signing Carlos Lee. I can't believe such suggestions of Holliday over Lee. I like Adam Dunn too (although a completely different type of player who strikes out all the time in comparison to Lee who makes a ton of contact for a power hitter and strikes out rarely) and would rate them in a similar category, but I would rather sign Lee and keep my prized prospects than emptying my farm system for Dunn and also paying him on top of that. Wouldn't you? If you are a team that gets on base (as they can with guys like Berkman) you also probably prefer somone cleaning up who doesn't whiff and come up totally empty much of the time compared to a guy who will hit with power but make more productive contact there more often.

I'm not sure why people here seem to value keeping other people's money more so than young talent in such discussions where finances are over-emphasized. To me, trading away top young talent is a much higher acquisition price than some rich owner's money he was going to spend anyway.

If you are on the edge of the playoffs with a veteran team, you don't spend all your time and resources primarily worried about young unproven talent and finding the next Ryan Howard. That's for rebuilding teams that can give unproven guys a chance to see if they develop since the team is losing anyway. If you are Houston, you want something proven that you can win with NOW in this window of opportunity before it closes.