Reactions of what ended up being the Kendall deal (Lawton, Redman and cash for Kendall) keep trickling in. Paul Meyer is quoted in the Post-Gazette as saying that the deal could turn out to be Littlefield's best. With all due respect, I think that's a bit of a silly notion, considering that the deal has little concrete long-lasting benefits for the team. To me, there's no beating the Giles for Perez, Bay and Sterwart deal. That deal brought in two core players. I think the Ritchie for Wells, Fogg and Lowe is miles ahead of the Kendall deal as well. Heck, I think the Jason Christianson for Jack Wilson deal ranks better.

To be fair to Mr. Meyer, he does qualify his statement by saying that there is still much work to be done for the deal to live up to Littlefield's best. In that respect, he's right. This deal could still yield dividends. The extra money could be invested wisely and Redman and Lawton could be turned around for something down the road. However, it remains to be seen whether Littlefield can pull off another steal like the Giles deal or whether he'll serve up another disaster like the Aramis deal. At this point, I'd settle for a happy medium.

Most of the reaction from the Bucco faithful (here and here, for example) has been generally positive. For a non-Pirate viewpoint, Michael Berquist's Citizen Blog offers a less optimistic take -- calling the deal "the worst move [he's] seen the team make. Awful, truly awful." Ouch. While I don't totally agree with that, he makes an interesting case based on Lawton's subpar defense.

It was mentioned in numerous places, including in the comments to my Lawton write-up, that Kendall wasn't going to yield a whole lot more than what we got for him. This is probably true. The deal we ended up with is a heckuva lot better than an earlier rumored deal that had Kendall being shipped off to San Diego for Kevin Jarvis and Jeff Cirillo. Of course, that's kinda like saying Police Academy 6 is better than Police Academy 8 -- better doesn't necessarily mean good.

I think what it comes down to is that the Kendall deal rubs me the wrong way, not so much because of the deal itself, but because of the bitter aftertaste of the Aramis and Benson deals. The Kendall deal isn't horrible, it just doesn't get me excited for the future.