No Beltre. No Roberts. No Grudzielanek. No Bay. No bullpen arm. The first trade deadline has come and gone.

Thanks to those of you who weighed in earlier today. Almost 300 comments, many of them tough and emotional, and I deleted only one — because it was totally off-point and stupidly abusive — and another well-intentioned comment reacting to it.

Here’s the bright side of it all: It’s the last day of July and we were able to growl and grumble and call out the villain of our choice while the team that we’re following is 1 1/2 games out of first place in a “rebuilding” year.

Yes, there are dangers ahead. A road-heavy schedule and young arms/minds/bats that haven’t seen the heat of a major-league title race. Alexi Casilla out of the lineup isn’t good and the bullpen’s margin for error is tiny.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating right now: This is better than what we could have imagined. Amazingly, the AL Central is still there for the taking. Thanks to Detroit and Cleveland for that.

Getting after it starts now.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.