How does our defense improve more than marginally if we bring back all the same guys? Hart, Braun, McGehee and Fielder are all poor defenders with little hope of improving. I would be less surprised to see our defense decline with those 4 than improve. Escobar should improve and Lucroy/Kottaras is probably better than Zaun/Kottaras but catcher defense has minimal impact on balls in play and that is what our defense really sucks at. Under the conditions set up in the lead we don't have Fielder on our team. Any player of value that we do have on our team would have to be traded to get pitching. If we give up anybody of value for Fielder, we don't get enough pitching to be competitive and Fielder is nowhere near the upgrade two good pitchers would be. Weeks, Hart or anybody else for Fielder is a wash or a minimal upgrade. We don't have a moderately talented team. We have an above average offense and one of the worst rotations in baseball. Given a choice, I would only keep GAllardo and Wolf of the current rotation and maybe Capuano. In reality, we need at least 2 good pitchers to get good enough to compete in our division. We don't need to get better than the Reds. We need to get better than the Reds, Cardinals, and Astros. The team as built right now is not a playoff team. They are about a 75-85 win team at each end of the luck spectrum. We could keep Fielder and sign a couple FA pitchers and go for it next year(Unfortunately I wouldn't be shocked if this happened, disappointed, not shocked. Attanasio strikes me as a guy who doesn't want to rebuild) or we could trade Fielder for a pitcher or 2 that would maybe help next year but help us by 2012 to supplement our top prospects who should be ready by then. Basically rolling the dice on a mid 80's win team for next year or going for a 90 win team in 2012. Our rotation in 2012 is shaping up to be Gallardo, Wolf, Odorizzi, and maybe Rogers/Jeffress. That isn't to bad especially if we can supplement that with a good pitcher or 2 brought back in trade. Fielder vs Gamel/Lawrie is a much smaller difference than Parra/Narveson vs pitcher brought back in Fielder trade.