While I can appreciate how you're analyzing the trades, no matter what was traded away, what was returned was all short-term fixes -- and that is always the core of the disagreement in this discussion, not how the players the Brewers traded away went on to do. And at the times of the deals, the pieces the Brewers sent were legit & not simply the fodder they've mostly turned out to be with several years of hindsight. In other words (for an example), instead of trading for two seasons of Marcum, the move could've been to trade Lawrie for a young arm that would be Brewers property for 5 seasons or more. Clearly, to Melvin's credit, in the Aoki deal he did a nice job finding this kind of an opportunity. I'm sure plenty of posters could take the time to go back & find a decent suggestion of a young, cost-controlled pitcher that Lawrie might have been able to return. Frankly, you could come up with a few decent hypotheticals if you're willing to go back & look things over from that timeframe.