Usually it takes a few seasons until the dust settles and it becomes clear who got the better end of a trade. It once seemed that the Cubs got Matt Clement from the Marlins for Julian Tavarez and a few throw-in prospects…and then Dontrelle Willis emerged as one of the best young pitchers in the game. Remember how the Twins got Joe Nathan? The Giants gave him up for the immortal A.J. Pierzynski. The Twinkies also got another pitcher in that deal that you may have heard of: Francisco Liriano. The point is that the winners and losers of a trade can’t be determined until months, even years down the road. So it’s totally unfair to judge GM’s today on trades that might look totally different a few years down the road. But unfair doesn’t mean I can’t do it anyway. Here’s a quick breakdown of the trades that we’ve seen this offseason.

--White Sox trade RHP Freddy Garcia to the Phillies for RHP Gavin Floyd and LHP Gio Gonzalez

This trade was like the drop in a roller coaster. You know it’s coming, it’s just a matter of when and how big it’s gonna be. Since the White Sox won the 2005 World Series, conventional wisdom around baseball held that GM Kenny Williams was going to deal one of his starting pitchers, since he had a boatload of them (Mark Buehrle, Jon Garland, Jose Contreras, Javier Vazquez, Brandon McCarthy). In a n era when teams pay through the nose for proven starters, it seemed that Williams had some pretty good bargaining chips to bring to the table, and yet all he could get for Garcia was the hugely disappointing Gavin Floyd and reliever Gio Gonzalez, a talented pitcher for sure, but a pitcher that he himself had traded away once already. It was surprising that Williams wasn’t able to get more for a horse like Garcia (6 straight seasons with at least 200 IP), but it was a deal Williams could afford to make because of Chicago’s extraordinary rotation depth. But then…

--White Sox trade RHP Brandon McCarthy to the Rangers for LHP John Danks

This is the one trade this offseason that I can honestly say stunned me. When I saw this one come across the ESPN ticker I actually sat up in my chair and took notice. Wasn’t the whole reason that Williams was shopping Buehrle, Garland and Garcia because he wanted to open a spot in the starting rotation for McCarthy? Wasn’t McCarthy supposed to be the future on the South Side of Chicago? That’s what it seemed like over the past year when there was a new rumor about a Sox starter being traded once a week. And yet Williams turns around and trades McCarthy just weeks after unloading Garcia. Unless there’s something wrong with McCarthy that I don’t know about (and there may very well be), I don’t understand why you give up a pitcher that has proven he can be at least a decent big-league starter for a prospect (Danks) that, though unquestionably talented, has no major-league experience. And the White Sox are a veteran team with about a two-year window to win another title; now is clearly not the time for this club to be trying to get younger. This is like breaking up with your girlfriend before senior year because there’s this other hot chick you want to hook up with, then before ever getting with the hot chick you tell her to take a hike and spend the next six months locked in your room with dirty magazines.