Headline written by R. Lankford during the course of an AIM conversation. Headline stolen by M. Nieves during the course of that same conversation.

Now that’s settled, a pair of recent articles on the Fangraphs site are relevant to Padres fans’ interest, with an added bonus that you probably haven’t seen this stuff on mlbtraderumors already.

The first is a quick overview of the Padres farm system’s performance this year. Marc Hulet names Chase Headley, Matt Buschmann, Matt Antonelli, Cole Figueroa, and Eric Sogard as the graduate, the riser, the tumbler, the 2008 draft pick, and the sleeper, respectively. I’ve heard (and written) about the success of others in the system, but I haven’t seen much coverage of some of these guys. That’s a good, albeit anecdotal demonstration of the organizational depth we enjoy these days, especially in the lower levels.

Next, Dave Cameron checks in on the results of four major prospects for star player trades from the previous offseason. Go ahead, guess how they’ve turned out. Ready to be wrong? Here’s Dave:

Four big trades of all-star caliber players, and in every single case, the rebuilding team either held steady or got significantly better while the contender didn’t improve at all, and in some cases, got a lot worse.

Poor results for the team acquiring the star don’t necessarily mean there is a correlation between trading for stars and playing worse the next year. But to paraphrase Cameron, it pretty well confirms what some of us have been saying: one player cannot carry a team.