Dayton Moore's first trade

The Royals have picked up CF Joey Gathright and 2B Fernando Cortez from the Rays for LHP J.P. Howell. I'm interested to see how this plays out, because I've always wanted to see Gathright play every day to see if he could really be the young Juan Pierre that so many people (myself not included) seem to think he can be. His numbers in the bigs this year have been terrible, but he's been better in the minors.

Cortez doesn't look like anything special and was most likely a throw-in, but Howell is interesting. He pitched pretty well in the minors until the Royals rushed him to The Show last year, starting his service time early and de-railing his confidence. He's been so-so in AAA this year, but there's still plenty of talent there. This is the kind of Economics 101 gamble that the Rays need to take with their pitching shortage and outfield surplus, and you could argue it's really not that much of a risk, depending on what you think of Gathright.

Either way, it'll be fun to watch this one play out.