HLR sends: 1B/RF Carlos Santana ($29), 2018 3rd Round Pick
WTFS sends: C Zack Collins (minors), 2018 1st Round Pick
Andrew’s Thoughts: I like this deal a good bit for WTFS, who are 14th in hitting points and need fire power as they fight toward a playoff spot. The CJ Cron experiment has been a disaster. It has left them a big void at both 1B and their UT spaces. Santana is affordable and offers a nice, safe floor. Consider Santana the anti-Byron Buxton, if you will. The Twins’ former #3 prospect behind Jose Berrios and Max Kepler is, by contrast to Santana, expensive and offers a safe floor only in the sense that the word “floor” could function as a synonym of the term “rock bottom.” It is safe in that it can’t possibly get any worse. But I digress…
I almost took Zack Collins third overall in our draft on the chance he retains that catcher eligibility, but meh, I didn’t. Point is, I find him interesting. I think he’s a better fantasy prospect than real life prospect. And the first round pick is a nice bonus. In this case, Hustle just didn’t really need Santana, I guess, so opted instead to take on some prospect value. That’s fine. He can flip these pieces in two or three weeks if necessary, perhaps at a greater premium as more teams drop in the standings. But in a vacuum, I just don’t really find the two pieces compelling enough to fork over a sub-$30 Santana who is very keepable starting at $31 next season. He’s got a lot of 1B’s, yeah, but Santana can plug in at RF too and fill either UT spot. I’m usually a sucker for depth (and fearful of injuries); I’d rather have too many good players and occasionally leave the better guy on the bench than to have too thin a roster. And by adding prospects, it’s not like dealing from depth to improve a weakness elsewhere.
Of course, if you look at this trade in conjunction with Hustle’s other trade, from his perspective, he swapped out Santana for a younger, cheaper Myers, and swapped out Ross and De Leon (essentially prospects) for two more prospects in the form of a first round pick and Collins. You could easily build your case that, as prospects go, Collins is more valuable than De Leon heads up. So while I think HLR “lost” (for lack of a better term) this trade, I think this one paired with the other one are a net gain for his situation.