Cyclones send Yong away to Charlotte(43.03)

[niles08]

In somewhat unsurprising news (if you have followed anything BBA at all), The Omaha Hawks…ermmm Cyclones have come to an agreement to send Tu-Fu Yong out of town. Yong, who was on the track block much of last season, will make his way to a Charlotte team that has made some big moves over the past few days and looks to be setting itself up to compete.

Yong, who turned 31 in September, played well last season finishing with a 1.9 WAR and a 116 OPS+. That 1.9 WAR likely would have been higher had Yong not been asked to play shortstop in Omaha for 94 games in 2042. He posted a -6.3 ZR during that time. It is likely that Charlotte will let Yong play second or third base, where he could be an all-star next season. A big season looms for him as he will be playing for the team to pick up his $11,500,000 option for 2044.

Enough about other teams…Let’s discuss who the Hawks got in return.

Besides obviously now being $11,500,000 lighter in the payroll department, the team also acquired a pretty decent corner outfielder in Jaime Geerdinkck. Hopefully, he is either really good where we have to write about him a ton or he's really bad so the team trades him so we don’t have to try to remember how to spell that.

We shall call him….Geerd. At least for now.

Geerd is entering his 4th full season in the BBA, where he has been a 110 OPS+ bat so far in his career, with a big season in 2041 where he put up 3.2 WAR. He fell off a bit last year to 1.7 thanks to a batting line that fell from .308/.372/.557 to .262/.327/.493. His BABIP was .285 while in 2041 it was .337 so it's likely he falls somewhere in the middle of that to produce a .283/.345/.495 line if he was having an average season as that is his career average batting line as of now.

Geerd is solid in the field and likely will take over the fourth outfield spot behind the trio of Starks, Ordonez, and Ly. At least, assuming that Starks is going to move to the outfield as Wilson Estrada seems to be ready to take over at first base for the club. Geerd may see regular starts the first few weeks of the season if Omaha elects to leave Estrada down for service manipulation issues. Geerd has 3 years of team control remaining as he will be a free agent at the end of the 2045 campaign.