OK, one at a time. The Mets don't need to get to third place. They are in third place. Piazza wasn't a 30th round pick. He was a 62nd round pick. Lastly, neither I nor Alderson spoke of where people who were allegedly offered were drafted, but where they were supposedly objectively ranked as prospects within the system. Where Piazza ranked a year or two into his minor league career would be the real analogy. (Baseball America had him as #38 in all of baseball in 1993, so presumably top five in the Dodger system.) You're a lawyer, and you're trained to find hairline cracks in an argument and drive a chisel in them so they appear to be gaping wounds that demonstrate a foundation that cannot hold. I'm impressed by you and think you belong in a courtroom, not at a desk, and I wish you to be on my side when I'm in trouble, even if I hate when you play your skills against me. But you miss the basic thingie here, though, and that's that I'm not suggesting that keeping Hairston is some pre-eminent value that eclipses any other, only answering Gwreck in asserting that there is a value there to be weighed against others. Most of the factors I noted were clearly small, but real.