2063.2 Yuan More Time

[ae37jr]

It all started with the smallest of motives. "Let me post a trade block to try to trim the 40 man". Little did I know the madness that would ensure once I pressed the "Post block to Discord" button.

Almost instantaneously I got several messages. The most interesting coming from Shoeless. He said he has interest in some of my filler players, but could not elaborate or finalize anything yet. I knew immediately what he was talking about.

Not too long ago I had a deal in the works with Brooklyn. One that would send a couple defensive minded players I was set to non tender anyway, plus a few million to pay for their salary and help them get back on their feet. Negotiations went quite and when I tried to rekindle talks, Ben told me the reason. He was switching franchises with someone.

I decided to message the commish. After all, Brooklyn is in my blood., I enjoy a good challenge and I know Ben is from the Twin Cities area. I let Matt know that I heard a rumor that Ben was switching teams. If nobody wanted to switch, I'd be thrilled to take the helm of the Robins. I was excited for the opportunity but also nervous cause of the timing. I had already sent the Your Mom trade offer to Sean. That situation could have got messy if switched teams while that was in progress. But just like I thought, it didn't matter. Commish informed me that Shoeless was behind it and things were set.

Getting back to the minor trade with shoeless. I let him know that I knew about his switch and was all for his request for a couple of my defensive minded scrubs.He let me know that he was kinda frustrated that I made the your mom trade and shared with me the framework of what ended up being this deal. It was a deal he concocted with me in mind as we were likely the only team with the money, cap space and bravado to make a deal so bold.

When I saw Choa Yuan's name on the list I nearly fell out of my chair. He is a player I've wanted for a while, but couldn't put a value on because of his over inflated potential. Like the your mom trade, it kinda matched up with my needs. I thought the idea of making another trade like this wasn't possible. I took got frustrated. Like your father, I kinda wished I didn't commit to your mom and instead played the field a little more. But we are.... or were sooo far under that cap that it was very much possible. A threesome! Yuan, me and your mom make thee.

Ok. Now on to the players...

Harold Northard
Ok, let's get him out of the way 1st. He is the net negative that made this deal possible. $10.6 each of the next 2 seasons with an innings triggered option in year 3. So we are likely going to eat $37.8 mil over 3 seasons. Of course I will try everything in my power to make sure year 3 doesn't vest. And I do have an idea if I can get him past year 1. But even that is a tall task.

A few minutes after posting the deal, the league updated it's rules. Most of them actually work in our favor on this deal. The surplus dev budget and stadium fees roughly equal to what Northard will cost in a year.

But.... The potential stadium size reduction hurts. For whatever reason, during my 40 some odd seasons in the league it was ok for the Yellow Springs, Sacramentos, and Nashville's of the world to make money hand over fist with 65k stadiums. But now it's an issue. I guess what is good for the goose isn't good for the gander.

But I digress. Make the rules and we shall follow. A true goose can hang in any environment without bitching and lobbying to make rules just to get themselves over the hump. But yeah, that could complicate this deal some. I'm not scared though. Worst case scenario is we have to write a bunch of watered down stuff that 3 people will read and collect enough PP to trade in for our $10 million dollar "oh shoot, I can't balance my budget" reward.

Choa Yuan
All throughout last year I said this team needs a lead off hitter like Felix Ramos. I acquired Miller Shed and he did a nice job. Even brought back the actual Felix Ramos. But he is a shell of his prime self. Yuan should be that guy. High OBP, good speed, works counts. His defense sucks, but as we talked about last time... Get me to the 7th and we can sub in Cabrera. It's obvious Yuan has some untapped potential. We are hoping we can tap it and turn him into the premier player his POT suggests.


Jorge Cano
This is a prime Twin Cities acquisition. His name has been dragged through the mud over the years, but he has quietly been a 3+ WAR third baseman. I really have no clue what I'm doing with 3B. All I know is that my production sucked last season and I refuse for that to repeat. Cano and Felix Ramos will be in some sort of platoon. You perform, you play. WAR numbers will suffer. We are looking for quality over quantity.

Luis Gonzales
This guy is interesting. We have a lot of young high stuff pitchers coming up and Gonzo will blend right in with them. He is BBA ready, but doesn't have to be rostered yet. Obviously we have quite a roster crunch going on. So he'll likely be left off the 40 man and possibly even start year in minors. We see him as a third arm in our end game scheme with Duran and Andres Gonzales.Though he will likely move down the card as our bullpen evolves.

Antonio Melendez
This is the big prospect we bought. Who doesn't want to spend $30 million on a nice big lumbering DH? What I really wanted here was Mooreheads own Larry Jensen to pair with Yuan. But shoeless said he wanted to keep Jensen. Unlike other teams *cough* Nashville *cough*. Excuse me. I mean we like to make the trade experience good so teams want to make deals with us again. If I haggle over Jensen, Doug could be like... Screw this guy, I'll take this deal elsewhere. But this way, we pretty much made the deal on his terms. Maybe down the line when he realizes Brooklyn is so f'ed that he can't get out of the red and field a competitive team until Jensen is 84, he will give us a call and first crack.

Ok enough with the rambling I could have turned this into 5 team news and a league feature with this word count. What I like about Melendez is that he is a bumper. He was drafted as a 4 contact 5 power and 5 eye. A year and a half later he is 5/9/8. If you have been playing this game for a while you will know that when a player bumps like that he is likely to keep bumping... Or not. He is still raw so it's super risky. But there is a path that leads him into becoming one of the best bats in the game. And his timeline matches up with when I'm going to have to make decisions on a very expensive Raul Gallehos.

Speaking of Gallehos. You saw him on the block and now he is not.I was at a bit of a crossroads. I could have traded him to restock my farm and stay as an affordable middling team content with collecting a playoff check. Or I could have gone all in. Now is the time to go all in.

Gallehos, Malone, Aquilar, Sanchez, and Duran will all be on league minimum deals. We have a lot of really good contracts and not a lot of bad ones. There really aren't a lot of great teams in the Frick right now. Even Nashville and Sacramento aren't "as" stacked as they have been in the past. Other teams are close, but not quite there yet. I know I've said this before, but maybe this is our year. We were really close last year and this year's team is shaping up to be a lot better.

Nah, who am I kidding. We are still going to lose to Nashville. The only difference this year is that we are going to lose a lot of money doing so.