Hot Stove Hotties

Each week this Hot Stove season, we’ll look at some done deals and juicy rumors involving our favorite MLB hotties. If you want a comprehensive rundown of rumors, go to MLBTR. If you want the pretty, stay right here! [Ed. note: Starting next week, this will happen on Mondays instead of Thursdays. Just so ya know.]

Matt Holliday was the big story this week, after getting traded to Oakland on Monday for hottie reliever Huston Street, outfielder Carlos Gonzalez, and LHP Greg Smith. More about this deal (including plenty of visual aids), and the other stories of the week after the jump.

Will moving to a pitcher's park in Oakland hurt Matt Holliday?

OK. Here’s the Rockies’ haul for Holliday…this here is Greg Smith, a 24-year-old lefty starter who put together what looks like a very decent rookie year. In 32 starts (191 IP), he struck out 111 and walked 87 on his way to an ERA of 4.16. He came up through the Diamondbacks’ system and was acquired by Oakland in the Dan Haren deal. He’s been highly regarded throughout his entire pro career, even though he doesn’t have overpowering stuff.

This is Greg Smith; he's with the Rox now.

The Rox also got promising outfielder Carlos Gonzalez, a 22-year-old from Venezuela. Gonzalez has moderate home run power and ought to benefit from the move to the hitter-friendly Coors Field. Even if he doesn’t hit a million home runs, he has racked up a LOT of doubles and triples at every level of pro ball, so he’ll be a valuable hitter no matter what.

Gonzalez seems to have a promising future.

Last but definitely not least, the Rockies will get (hottie!!!) reliever Huston Street. There were some really intriguing rumors for a bit that Colorado would immediately trade Street…some said they’d send him to St. Louis for Ryan Ludwick. That rumor has died down a bit, but if they pulled that off, this would be an absolutely brilliant transaction for Colorado. However, it doesn’t look like it will happen that way.

Oh, and here’s some pretty.

Never forget the importance of stretching!

A nice view, no?

Elswhere in baseball, the Nationals and Marlins swapped a few players. Washington sent Scott Olsen and Josh Willingham to Florida for Emilio Bonifacio, Jake Smolinksi, and P.J. Dean. I don’t have a big rundown of this one, but here are the details from MLBTR, and you can click on any of the players’ names for their baseball-reference pages (except Dean, who apparently doesn’t exist at B-R yet).

In Rumorland, it looks like the Atlanta Braves will be the winners in the long and crazy Jake Peavy contest.

In Sadland, the Padres uncerimoniously dumped closer Trevor Hoffman, which makes him a free agent and raises the possiblity of him having to finish his fabulous and historic career with someone other than San Diego, and that’s just wrong.

This pic has been used on the site before, but...yeah. I had to.

The free agent market opens up tomorrow, so things will get really colorful. Here are all the MLB free agents, and here are the Minor League free agents.