Bobby Crosby finally traded. Oakland gets 10 big bats in return that should help even more our offense.

While its a division rival we're helping, its still a good trade as I don't think the Mariners will contend this year. Plus the lose of the 10 bats should hurt their already small offense.

According to PECOTA projections this increases our win projection by 2, leaving us at 88, ahead of the Angels.

Details of the trade here

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/2008-05-23-bat-trade_N.htm

Over the past few weeks we've seen too many mock drafts that project the Raiders picking Jeremy Maclin. And while I agree that WR is a huge need for this draft, getting Maclin would be a huge mistake because of 1 simple reason. Johnny Lee Higgins.

All the highlights we've seen of him and every cheap internet scouting report I have read say the same thing. Explosive player who has a chance to be a dangerous deep threat, with an added bonus of being a very good returner.

I'm sorry but that's exactly what JLH is. An explosive player with a sick 40 time that can make the big play,  and of course, and excellent returner that gave us a lot of sparks last season. Even Al Davis is not stupid enough to start 2 players at WR that have the exact same strengths and weaknesses.The best complement Higgins could have is either Crabtree or Nicks.

One argument that people might offer is that Higgins has no starting material, but lets look at the last 4 games of the season (which are the ones that give us hope). He had 14 receptions for almost 200 yards. While I agree an average of 3.5 receptions a game isn't anything special, we have to consider that last years passing offense was a mess and should be at the very least decent this year, plus that's what receivers like Maclin and Higgins do, not a high number of receptions but a lot of yards thanks to good YACs and long bombs. 

Now assuming that we do agree that Maclin isn't the best fit (I'm sure a lot of people still wont agree but what the hell) and that Crabtree and Nicks would be indeed good choices there might be a problem. If one of the top 6 teams draft Crabtree then we're in a very dangerous position. We end up being too high at 7 for Nicks and too low at the 40th pick (or thats what the current mock drafts project). So it will be interesting to see what happens, hopefully Davis knows that Maclin won't be the best fit with the current reciever corp we have and the future that Higgins has shown.