PAT GILLICK, REVOLUTIONARY

Seattle's GM has decided that he'd like to make things easy on the A's and gift wrap the AL West and make the playoffs that much harder on everyone else who faces the Yankees.

Gillick and Brian Cashman played a game of grab ass yesterday that culminated in a trade of Jeff Nelson from Seattle to the Yankees for Armando Benitez and CASH. Both players had been waived and each team claimed the other's soon-to-be former property, which allowed the trade to commence.

Gillick insists that the trade of Nelson had nothing to do with Nelson's criticism of the organization for failing to make a move prior to the trade deadline.

So why the hell did they wiave him?

Nelson requested a closed door meeting with upper management on Monday, said his apology for criticizing the team for not trying to make any moves (apparently Seattle was trying to do something-even with Pat Gillick in Toronto at the time of the trading deadline), left without shaking the hands of Mariners chairman and CEO Howard Lincoln and team president Chuck Armstrong and jumped on the team charter for Cleveland.

Strange.

The deal essentially means there will be more frequent blood-lettings from Seattle's bullpen. Benitez is a decent pitcher, but, you really don't want decent when you need to finish someone off. You'd prefer to have a guy like Nelson. Benitiez is prone to giving it up and not above making things very nasty for all those involved.

Oh, well.

It may not matter when the A's lose games to the freakin' Detroit Tigers.