It's hard to say what the prices were. If the prices were indeed too high... then OK. They have been somewhat aggressive since they walked in the door so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Back in June when we had a huge lead and we were all looking at the trade deadline for playoff enhancement. The majority of our TD posters were focused on the bullpen and that is understandable. We did need bullpen arms there was no question about it. However, I believed then and I believe now that a quality starter was a much bigger priority. Back when we were rolling... Our starters were taking care of the majority of the innings and our offense was driving up huge run differentials. These two things really masked the bullpen situation that eventually came to a conclusion in June with the release of 4 of them. I believed then... based on how the team was getting the job done. If we lost a starter or two to injury or if a starter or two develop a case of the struggles (See Perez... See Berrios). It would reveal a hole in both the rotation and the pen because the pen would have to pick up the slack. There are times when I hate being right all the time. Since I'm not seeing Smeltzer or Dobnak making any starts and it is late August and I'm seeing Thorpe being held silent unless the game is not in doubt. I fully believe it is the plan of the front office to hold and simply fight through these issues with Berrios and Perez. This is incredibly risky. It might work out fine... but this is incredibly risky in my opinion. If the health in the rotation holds (History suggests it won't)... this means that the starting rotation will absorb a lot of innings. If the health doesn't hold... they will have to turn to someone that they don't have near enough MLB data on... basically bet red and hope the roulette wheel turns up red. If the health does hold... they will be running low on gas... Right about the time we really really need them... In the playoffs. Being primarily healthy in the rotation is not lucky. It really isn't. That said... we can still do this thing. I'll be watching faithfully.