Sitting around in the Valencia front office GM Greathouse is twiddling his thumbs trying to think of something to take his mind off the month of June. The Stars have managed to amass a 1-15 record so far this month. While the front office personnel understands that Valencia is in the middle of a rebuild, losing at this pace is more than its inhabitants can bear, rebuild or not.
Valancia analytics guru, Ann L. Beeds walks into the office and says, "You look like you are sad."
"Just a little depressed at the progress or lack thereof," Greathouse replied.
"Surely it can't be that bad." Ann stated.
"We have had more L's this month than the sentence Little Lilly likes to lick lollipops after a late lunch." Greathouse quipped.
Then Ann hands over a memo. The memo states that all of the cool kids are going into a trading frenzy. Cobble Hill is doing it so what's new?. Cape Fear is doing it, Phoenix is doing it, Charm City, Las Vegas Des Moines is going bonkers. San Fernando is in the act, Nashville, Atlantic City the list goes on and on.
Not wanting to be left out of the cool group, Greathouse turns on his computer and there are messages from Vancouver and Cobble Hill. Coincidence? I think not he mutters to himself.
After some bantering back and forth with the dust settling, two trades were made involving Valencia.
Qing-lai Ou-Yang was sent to Valencia in return for Kinzo Iwomata. To compensate for the additional salary of KInzo, Vancouver also sent 18 year-old AA pitcher Jose Alaniz. Kinzo will hopefully not be too much worse than Qing-lai and also adds another potential quality arm to the farm system. The move will cost Valencia almost $5M (assuming it buys out Kinzo's contract in 2064) in exchange for Alaniz.
In the other trade, Valencia picked up former Valencia pitcher Dana Pualani. Cobble Hill also sent along $1.25M to help compensate for Pualani's salary. The deal will cost Valencia $2M in 2064, but it gives them another arm for free in 2063.
The Valencia faithful are hoping that the additional pitching will give a slight nudge to the Valencia win total. Given their ages/recent performance people are not expecting much, but then again, it isn't that hard to beat 1-15 ... unless you are a Cleveland Brown fan from 2016/2017.