Back on the date before the trade deadline sim, August 27th, San Fernando made one last trade of 2063. Despite it including an impending free agent, this deal was made with an eye towards 2064 for the all-but-officially eliminated from the playoffs Bears.
Off Topic
08/27/2063 SP Leland Rogers traded by the New Orleans Crawdads to the San Fernando Bears in exchange for minor league SS Cyrille Ricciardi.
I’ve had a soft spot for Rogers going back to his San Antonio days and I remember feeling a twinge of jealousy when he was acquired by Des Moines. He had a monster season in 2059 when he covered 206.1 innings with a 3.36 ERA but he hadn’t followed that up with another 2+ WAR year until this one. Despite his 5-20 record, 194.2 innings of 4.72 ERA either in front of a terrible defense (New Orleans) or in a bandbox like mine is valuable.
Rogers currently makes $2.7M, is free agent eligible in a couple of months, and is a greedy sonuvabitch so what gives? Well, part of the reason why I love six pitch starters is they make for excellent reliever conversion candidates. We’re gonna try to work out an extension in the neighborhood of 2/$6M and sink the $2M worth of PPT into him to see if we can’t turn Griz into a 7-6-5 reliever. I guess that’s worth it? Idk, but reliever conversions are fun. The only downside is his fastball/slider mix will continue to struggle against lefties.
In return, the Crawdads receive a D+ shortstop who is solid defensively and still developing his mediocre offensive tools as a 20 year-old in Short Season A ball. Ricciardi fills what seems to be an organizational hole for New Orleans but had several better prospects ahead of him in the San Fernando org.
