Gio Gonzalez is on the trade block and, as if Billy Beane was divinely inspired by Brad Pitt’s performance in Moneyball, he’s trying to trade like it’s 1999 (or whenever that book came out, cue “Lazy Song” music).
And while anyone with eyes and a high school level grasp of statistics can tell you that Gonzalez’s career 4.4 BB/9 is an enormous red flag, teams are still begging Beane to take their top prospects in exchange for the 26-year old left-hander.
In true bizzaro-world fashion, the Washington National have stepped up as a possible suitor for Gio’s services. Here’s why trading Gonzalez to the NL East power(less)house would be a MLB fan’s dream.
It is often the case that a baseball franchise will over-hype a player for publicity sake. It is not a secret, nor should anyone be surprised by this behavior. After all if it was our decision to make (how to manage the image of your team’s players), we would be doing the exact same thing. Enhancing the image of players is an accepted practice and is not a problem. There is nothing wrong with it. However, although your average baseball fan may fall for this type of marketing technique, the avid baseball community does not usually fall into the trap. I would argue that they have fallen for it in a case which I have been following very closely: Andrew Oliver.
Northern teams have finished up their trips to the south and southern schools have stopped hosting “mini-tournaments” and invitationals to open up the season. Universities have arrived home from their spring break trips with the young season treating them either well or not so well. Teams are roughly twenty games or more into the season now and are gearing up for conference play. The games prior to conference play are obviously important for national ranking purposes and for players to get their feet wet before the conference season begins. Therefore, it is important to give fans an update on the new and improved Division I college baseball rankings as teams begin their conference seasons. 
It’s easy to start predicting great things for teams who have added big-name players and have a recent history of success. Even then, a team could disappoint you due to injuries or a simple failure to live up to the hype. This season the Philadelphia Phillies and the Boston Red Sox are the teams for which you could make such rosy predictions.
What’s all this talk about the Phillies? Yeah, they acquired Cliff Lee, and yeah they have a sweet rotation… but the Braves ranked 3rd in ERA last year, and the Phils ranked 5th. Apparently MLVtv and ESPN haven’t taken this into consideration. Not only did the Braves have the 3rd best rotation in the NL… they did it without Jurrjens and Medlen. Booyah.