Stop me if I'm wrong, but doesn't every trade deadline season proceed in more or less the same way? There's always the rumblings, early on, that this year is somehow different from every other. Which it isn't. Then there's some wild speculation about some guys who obviously aren't going anywhere written just because we kind of expect such behavior from baseball writers. A few incredibly unexciting middle relief and prospect-for-prospect deals go down. Then, without fail, the articles about how nobody interesting will get traded start. Then the next day guys start moving.

It is funny that after weeks of speculation about Alfonso Soriano a Carlos Lee deal takes place with little to no preface. The Brewers sure didn't get very much for El Caballo, which must be supremely disheartening to the Nationals brass. Rent-a-player or not, Lee will make a big difference in the Metroplex for the Rangers and I'm surprised that not a single high-profile prospect type went Milwaukee's way in this trade. What happened to those DVD guys I have heard so much about? Did the Brewers decide to wait for the Blu-Ray format?

So if the Brewers are sellers, that means they're not in the market for the apparently available Greg Maddux, right? So where will he go? It seems to be that absent the family connection in Milwaukee the teams near his home in Vegas all eliminate themselves somehow. The Diamondbacks are not going to deal any of their young dudes. The Dodgers have played their way out of it these last few weeks, and I suspect Ned Colletti is smart enough to see as many have that Maddux is on his last legs. The Angels don't need pitching. San Diego maybe? What have they got that the Cubs would want? As a Rockies fan I have no problem with the other teams in the division giving away bits of their future for incremental advance this season. The closer we get to zero hour, the more this trade deadline looks a lot like all of the other ones -- the real winners are the teams that just give the whole thing a pass.