I know what the Outs are thinking: “What? Choo makes a trade
and it’s immediately blog worthy and I make two and I get nothing?”
Sorry for the delay. Maybe it was because I worked until 8
p.m. last night.
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| It's Saul Good!I'm not sure about some of these deals. A few of you might want to attain the services of Saul Goodman, because I think you received broken goods. Darvish, Greinke, Tanaka — all three have injury questions looming over them, and Dickerson is a BAbip nightmare! |
Maybe it was because I had to then make and eat dinner,
followed by watching the new must-see series Better Call Saul — the spinoff is off to an
excellent start.
Or maybe it’s because I just needed a day to digest the fact
that the National League just got a bit harder to navigate.
The last two World Series Champions are the Outs and
Vandelay — note that the American League hasn't won since 2010 — and they've now positioned themselves at the top heading into 2015.
Vandelay didn’t make a move and he doesn’t have to in order
to remain a 2015 favorite. The Outs had the best pitching staff in 2014 and
that has helped him in the offseason of 2015.
Moving two excess pieces in Yu Darvish and Zack Greinke, the
Outs took a significant step forward to contend with his brother Jeff.
First, he dealt Greinke to Steroid.ERA — who can’t help but
grab an ace starter when he sees one — for Josh Donaldson and Hunter Pence.
Outs also moved up three picks in the third round, and it only cost him Matt
Carpenter and Blake Swihart.
Greinke’s elbow was just back in the shop for an oil change
— so to speak — Swihart hasn’t arrived yet, and Carpenter is coming off of a
down year.
Pence is reliable and a huge addition in RF, the one
position the Outs needed to fill, and Donaldson, coming off a down year of his
own, is now in hitter-friendly Toronto where the power should really shine,
especially with big bats like Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion there with
him.
In the end, I think the Outs make out pretty well in this
deal.
Steroid is in good shape, too, now with three legit aces,
Felix Hernadez, Johnny Cueto and Zack Grenke on the staff. It pushes a very
good Doug Fister to the draft where he should go in the first round, easily.
The Outs continued to strengthen his already strong team
sending excess SP Yu Darvish to his brother for Gerrit Cole. This gives him yet
another pitcher to keep as he can already keep Corey Kluber and Michael Wacha
under the minor league rules.
As it stands now, I’m counting 20 players who easily should
be keepers in my opinion, which means at this point, three first rounders are
heading to the draft from this team. It’s just a question of who?
In the other deal from Tuesday, it was Steroid again,
sending another 3B away, this time Todd Frazier, to the Cheese Steaks for
Daniel Murphy. This was pretty simple. Steroid wanted an upgrade at 2B and the
Steaks flat-out just needed a 3B after trading Pablo Sandoval in that trade I
didn’t even blog about. That’s because he got Corey Dickerson back, and, well,
I’m not a believer in him yet. A pure product of Coors Field (.363 at home,
.252 away) Dickerson trended downward late in the season. He’s strictly a
platoon guy with 80 percent of his at-bats coming against righties because he
hits .328 off of them, compared to his .253 vs. lefties. He struck out an
alarming 21 percent of the time last year and his BAbip — Choo will love me for
this — was really high at .356, which Choo will tell you that means he’s in for
a regression. He’ll likely trend back closer to the .307 BAbip, which he had in
2013 when he batted just .263 on the season.
So, yeah, I like the Sandoval end of this deal for Chalupa, who has had a strong first offseason. Panda will
peg the Green Monster often.
That would have been a nice way to end this, but no.
No, why should Jimmy stop typing?
Of course the Steaks had to make another trade in the middle
of this blog.
And a big one, too.
Masahiro Tanaka, the man he could have drafted with the No.
1 pick last year, is now his. Justin Upton goes to the Gamblers, which means he
essentially traded Brian McCann, Jose Bautista, Jorge Soler, Ken Giles, and two minor
league pitchers, who still have promise, for Justin Upton.
Even the Diamondbacks are like, “What the hell? At least we
got Prado.”
Yeah, interesting how it all turns out.
Nevertheless, when you take away the history, I actually
like this deal for the Gamblers. The Choo is building up an army of bats and this
is a good move to combat that. I really love the Padres lineup, and Petco
Horrors aside, I think they’re going to score some runs. Homers will be down,
but Upton will still drive in some runs with Wil Myers and Matt Kemp in that
lineup.
For the Steaks, this move means that the aforementioned and
thoroughly-literally-abused-by-the-Jargon Corey Dickerson will move into LF.
All I have to say is, BAbip! Choo, get your shirt out.
Still, forget about LF. The Steaks have Tanaka to go with
Jon Lester and Max Scherzer. At least, he has him until the UCL gives out.
Steaks will hope for a full 34-start season, but there is huge risk in this
deal. Tanaka chose to rehab instead of go for surgery — and who can blame him? Who wants surgery? — but that’s a bit scary from a fantasy standpoint. The majority of these rehab
cases eventually end with Tommy John, so this is a huge gamble on his part.
If it pays off, he has a rotation that can rival the Outs
and Vandelay, and of course, Steroid, who now has three aces.
OK, I just checked my email. No new trades. Time to wrap
this up.
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