JobuNeedsARefill trades away
Baz, Shane ($0 prospect)
Kieboom, Carter ($0 prospect)
TBD trades away
Sanchez, Gary ($35)
Wood, Alex ($9)
Hustle’s Toxic $.02
My knee jerk reaction is to always give TBD the benefit of the nod for a trade, they scout prospects well, so I just assume they kind of bought low on Keiboom after a forgettable major league debut and Baz is probably an Ace now. Whatever. The trade does seem OK. I look back on this old trade review where Elton originally gave up Sanchez (a slightly cheaper version of him) for 4 prospects, only one of which really has legs in 2020. So 2 full seasons later Sanchez gets moved for 2 prospects. Now, I’m sure all 4 of those prospects looked a lot better 2 seasons ago, but point remains, if only one of these TBD scouted prospects hits, the return is probably similar. So trading Sanchez 2 years too soon netted basically nothing but losing out production on one of the better catchers in the game, and he still is.
A lot of TBDs trades thus far needs to be looked at in the lens that they need to cut guys to get to $500, a rule many people hated without understanding, or they hated because of “bundling”, the least American and moral thing that can be done. I’m sure they chose which players they could get value from to get salary off their ledger and landed on Sanchez because they also acquired Carson Kelly for free and have James McCann. Personally, I think both are probably a decent downgrade from Sanchez, so I assume they might be in the market for a catcher if they can get one. I do also really like Carson Kelly, but just not banking on him to be very good, and Sanchez has been elite when healthy at his position for a few years now, albeit he may have peaked.
The prospects are good. Clark gets the best or second best catcher in baseball for under 10% of his budget. I can’t say I dislike it for him. He regrets this trade only if one of the prospect turns into a superstar and Sanchez sucks, which seems under 50% of both those things happening.
Good trade for…. BOTH teams.
BAILEY’s THOUGHTS
I’m going to give the win to Jobu here simply for being willing to deal prospects that we’ve all heard of for proven MLB talent. Gary Sanchez is a very good catcher and Alex Wood is a fine wildcard. Wood’s an injury-riddled season removed from being an 800 point pitcher and was a 900 point pitcher the year prior. This is a good risk. If he’s hurt again, you cut him pre-2021 and move on.
It’s possible this deal looks crappy eventually because Sanchez’s defense sucks so bad that he’s 1B or UT only while one or both of these prospects are awesome and cheap, but that’s down the road. Go get you some points now and put up a fight.
For TBD, this is just your standard Yearly Powerhouse budget move. I look forward to them trading one of Shane Baz or Carter Kieboom in June for a couple of high priced studs.