Balta1701

You understand how free agency works right? Like the step where you are talking about extending him means you actually have to pay him?

Yes. It's clear that somehow the person writing that thought it was obvious so they should see that some of us still see how "a solid catcher for the next 5 years" is a useful thing compared to a couple short termers.

So how are they clearing a spot? DL trip for Moncada?

Q1: Yes Q2: No

Narvaez.

When Jones was 100% healthy? Absolutely.

Because of how things worked out, we also have a rotation that profiles as so right handed that it would benefit us substantially to think about Bumgarner and Keuchel specifically to give at least one left handed arm. Depending on how they perform the rest of the year, Bumgarner might be more expensive, cost a draft pick, and whether he could co-exist with Tim Anderson's bat flips is an open question.

I still can't figure out this injury. There was never a "Jay sprains his whatever" article in February, he just showed up to the team so badly hurt that he will miss literally 1/2 the season. Did they just not give him a physical?

Somehow that's believably insane.

Is there some reason why that deal could not have been done in February?

For the record once again...the Royals have a championship trophy and 2 world series appearances out of that run. I will take that any time you want to offer it.

Kody Medieros, Blake Rutherford, Ryan Cordell, Casey Gillaspie.

Not relievers.

Honestly, we're close enough and in need of bullpen pieces enough that I'd take the chance on holding guys once they have had a decent season. For every guy we trade, we're going to have to find a replacement next offseason. May as well keep the guy around assuming no one offers anything ludicrous in return.

.875 OPS in April, .766 in May, .853 in June. James McCann last 28 days: .724 OPS. And no, it's not even worth looking at their BABIP numbers to say which one of those 2 is going to be best described by "fading". He's absolutely been better than expected but "our organization is unwilling to teach catchers how to catch" is not an excuse.

I think it's safe to say at this point that RH's rebuilding trades have put this team in a position to make a jump in 2020, and your evaluations of each of those 3 trades, while somewhat optimistic, aren't unfairly so. However, those are not the entirety of Rick Hahn's trades. There's one in 2016 that we still will not even mention in this discussion, but even ignoring that one, Rick Hahn remains the 2nd best GM the Athletics have. These down years were substantially caused by Rick Hahn being willing to sacrifice years down the road for his winning teams in 2015 and 2016, and the trades where he gave up guys who are now solid big leaguers were a big part of that. Yes, several of those guys took a lot of work, but Oakland did that work and now they have several solid big leaguers out of it. Rick Hahn is the difference between Oakland being a .500 team and Oakland being 5 games below .500 right now, and they have been less lucky than we have. And yeah, I'm going to drag the Colome trade into this too, because it still was not a smart move. We gave up a player under team control for 5 years for one under control for 2 years. At least last year, we should have been doing the exact opposite. If we did that because our staff is too lazy to work with a catcher on their development, that is not an excuse. If we traded Colome for a young catcher who currently was putting up solid numbers and had improved on everything in his game year over year, we would be saying "There's a good chance our catcher's spot is solved, maybe it's not with an all star but this frees up money to go sign Cole and we can move Collins to 1b right now". Instead we're still talking about Grandal and wondering if Collins can play there. That trade fits in with the trend of his previous ones - making moves that are too aggressive for his roster to support, giving up on guys because either he can't see how they could develop or because his organization is too lazy to deal with them. We're probably going to have to do some moves like that next year to find a pitcher or two, and that move doesn't look particularly good in the light of him making the exact same kind of mistake with guys in 2015 and 2016. So I'll go so far as to say that RH's rebuilding trades are showing positive promise this year, but his "Win now" trades for established big leaguers have been setbacks for the franchise almost every time. Heck, that phrase describes his first couple years too.

He's also missed 11 of Tampa Bay's games so far this season.

Only if you really think LaVine is a strong piece. I think he's a decent but overpaid player whose scoring would look no where near as good if there was anything of value around him (including the system/coaching staff)

If he has a decent 2nd half I think Keuchel really could be a good matchup. Since we have an all-righty rotation otherwise, he does give some balance, playoff veteran, no draft pick attached, and you could probably get away with a 2-3 year deal after the offseason here. Plus you don't have to worry about Bumgarner coming in and lecturing Tim Anderson about bat flips.

So the Bulls clear LaVine's contract, give up the #7 pick, get Ball and the #4 pick back? And have to absorb an expiring 1 year deal to do it? I'm game.

Remember that it also depends on who is rested/who pitches the Sunday before the game.

So, I don't see anyone having suggested this yet, but someone ought to. How much is it worth to have Abreu on the roster when Robert comes up?

Seriously, a 29 year old, LH hitting, decently fielding, overpaid right fielder is available from the North Side. If you picked up $50 million of the $86 million he has remaining they'd probably give you him for the equivalent of Alex Call.

If a team just offered the backend top 100 guy for McCann, would you turn that down? Hypothetically, if the White Sox were 2 games behind the Twins and Castillo was out catcher and McCann was raking in Detroit, would you give up Madrigal for that? Madrigal + Bush? (I don't know that I know the answer to these, I'm trying to figure out what I think his value is).

What kind of value in a trade would you attach to a catcher performing like that with McCann's contract status?