Given the circumstances (note that phrase), with Ponson due to be a free agent at the end of the year, serious concerns about his short-term and long-term health, nagging doubts about whether he really has turned into a front end rotation starter or not, massive uncertainty about the coming off-season market for available starting pitchers and the conventional wisdom that teams can't pick up valuable, ready-to-contribute commodities in this day and age when making trade deadline deals, an argument could fairly easily be made that this was not only a good deal for the Orioles, but a phenomenal one.  You may argue amongst yourselves on that matter.

But that's just one side of the story.  A comment on the Belfry message board--something along the lines of implying that this was a plainly dumb move on the part of the Giants--prodded me to think about this transaction from the point of view of the other party involved.

Looking at a transaction as if it's a zero sum game is, in my view, a mistake.  It's not a matter, necessarily, of one team winning and one team losing, because the goals of the clubs involved aren't always the same.  In fact, they typically are quite disparate.  

This is not to say that a trade can't have a winner and a loser; it can, and often does.  But it isn't a pre-condition.

We've already defined the circumstances surrounding the trade from the point of view of the Orioles.  Let's take a look at the move from San Francisco's perspective.  I think it's fairly obvious that the Giants are trying to make a move that will propel them back into the World Series this season, with a strong push to go all the way and grasp the brass ring for the first time since the franchise was playing at the foot of Coogan's Bluff, 2500 miles away from its present home.  The Giants are clearly going for it, right now.  The building process is over; they see a clear opportunity to make a push--they are all but certain to win their division, with a double digit lead on the second place Arizona Diamondbacks--to go all the way this year.

This is a club that is highly dependent on a lineup filled with veterans, led by the grizzled Barry Bonds.  Almost all the important position player cogs on this club are over 30--in addition to Bonds, you have Ray Durham (31), J.T. Snow (35), Rich Aurilia (31), Benito Santiago (38), Marquis Grissom (36), Andres Galarraga (42)...  Of the position players of significance, only Edgardo Alfonzo (29) and Jose Cruz, Jr. (29) are less than 30, and just barely.  The pitching staff too, is relatively long in the tooth; only Jerome Williams, Jesse Foppert and Joe Nathan (in addition to the just acquired Ponson) are less than 30.  The Giants are an aging club.

San Francisco has been kicking around the edges of a championship for roughly a decade now and they have clearly decided to make a push this year.  The division title is all but assured.  The goal, it seems to me, is to strengthen the team's playoff worthiness in an attempt to give them the best chance they have to accomplish that goal.  In a way, with a number of other teams who are also perennially involved in pennant chases (Houston, St. Louis, Seattle, etc.) standing pat, it's kind of refreshing to see a team pull the trigger and show its players and fans that it's really trying to win today.  When you consider the short term, the Giants basically traded Moss for Ponson straight up...Ainsworth wasn't going to help with a playoff run, and Hannaman was pitching in A-ball.  

Whether Ponson will be a big lift to the Giants' playoff run remains to be seen, but he was arguably the best pitcher actually available to fill the bill.  Furthermore, consider what the Giants gave up, using the flip side of the above perspective:  Moss was having a lousy year despite pitching half his games in what is perhaps the best pitcher's ballpark in the major leagues; he also has chronic control problems (even in his ostensibly fine year with Atlanta in 2002, he walked nearly five men per nine innings and he's repeating that this year, all the while walking more than he's striking out); Ainsworth was a big time prospect, sure, but he's hurt, suffering a very rare shoulder injury and no one knows what he'll be when he comes back; Hannaman has a good arm, but the low minor leagues (where Hannaman is pitching) are littered with the detritus of pitchers with good arms who amounted to absolutely nothing in the end.  Arguably this is an exceedingly small price to pay for a chance to win it all.

Of course the counterargument would be that it's wishful thinking to view Ponson as a big help to any team's pennant push, but again, it's pretty easy to make the case either way, just as it is for what the Orioles acquired in the deal.  The point is that, regardless of how things turn out in the end, given the different goals the two franchises had when the deal was consummated, it's a trade that can, without the detriment of retrospective judgment, pretty fairly be regarded as properly executed by both parties.

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