Noooo....on Ichiro. He takes consistently bad angles to fly balls and is unwilling to ever put his body on the line (ie. diving) in order to make a great play.

The smartest thing to do would be to use his over-inflated reputation and trade him for 3-4 prospects. I'm sure that we would all greatly miss a slap-hitting outfielder who runs reluctantly...oh yeah, he is also at an age where his productivity will begin to diminish.

National League
1B Pujols
2B Utley (Hudson didn't play enough games)
3B?
SS Rollins (I think we see why the Phils are World CHamps)
P Sabathia (yeah, I know...Zambrano?)
OF Beltran
Victorino
Mike Cameron

AL
1B Youkilis
2B Ellis
3B Beltre
SS Jason Bartlett
P Rogers
OF Carlos Gomez
Nick Markakis
Grady Sizemore

I love those baseball "experts" who think that diving makes a great outfielder. Lenny Dykstra and Jim Edmonds are two classic divers. They also have (or had) zero range and got horrible jumps on the ball.

I'll take a healthy Ichiro who doesn't dive EVER over an Ichiro who dives 10 times a year and his hitting suffers and he struggles with minor injuries all year. Ichiro still gets to more balls than anybody out there because of his speed and because of that speed he doesn't need to dive.

It amazes me that there are those who can't figure out that the balls Ichiro would have to dive for are balls that a guy like Vernon Wells wouldn't even be within ten feet of to MAKE a dive and would drop in for an extra base hit. The guy can never do enough for some people.

Shark,

Just think of the balls Ichiro could get to if he did dive or take good angles. The fact that his speed might make up for some of his defensive deficiencies, does not eliminate those deficiencies.

Ichiro will soon be a passionless, aging, .280 slap hitter making $20 million a year. Can this team afford that? Trade him now while he still has perceived value around the league.

But the point I'm making wabubba is that he still gets to probably 3 more balls per game easily without diving than your average fielder. A guy like Manny Ramirez probably gets to 10% of the balls that Ichiro gets to.

I figure that just because he could get to a few more diving doesn't make it worth it. How much different would Ken Griffey's career have been if he hadn't slammed into the wall so many times? It is better to lose a battle and win a war sometimes.

It would be nice to get 3 or 4 great prospects for anybody, but no way the M's give him up, and they'd find a way to screw the trade anyway.