Two seasons ago Ben Heuring inherited a division winning team in Brooklyn. He proceeded to show that even as a rookie GM he understood that Robin fans deserved the best, and that he wasn't afraid to pull the big levers. He signed free agents. He made deals. Unfortunately, even the best laid plans can run afoul of the fates. The Brooklyn Robins finished 2044 15 1/2 games behind the division winning Jimmies of Charm City.
As 2044 rose in the east league pundits saw the team fading even further, with the media guide projecting a losing season. The team's performance in April, however, suggested just what the pundits could do what with those projections. The team was 18 wins over 12 losses, and sitting in the middle of what promises to be a real gunfight in the Atlantic division this year, as news came today of the trade that the young and talented Mr. Heuring had pulled the trigger on.
On the other side of the United States sat the Shoeless Wonder, GM of the Sacramento Mad Popes, a team that had been getting old at the seams for some time and whose threads had maybe burst with the leavings of three of the better pitchers in franchise history. At 10 wins and 20 losses, the storied baseball club was reassessing it’s situation, and coming up, well, not so rosy.
As these kinds of stories always go, these two managed to bump into each other one dark and stormy night and over a couple glasses of bourbon hashed out a deal that will set the courses of their teams for the next five or so seasons.
It breaks down like this:
The Robins—whose offense had been flagging—picked up three pieces that fill the roster with guys who can play now. The Mad Popes turned those pieces into three shiny bits of future.
Brooklyn’s haul:
2B Edgardo Encarnacion
3B/SS Jorge Lugo
1B Rafael Mota
Focusing on the present, the Robins got considerably better up the middle with this deal. Yes, they had Ronald Drouin at second base, and solid defensive man Dick Walton at short, but at 21 Walton already has an unhappy injury history and he’s not really wowed anyone with the bat in his three seasons. Drouin is a solid left bat, but really, really needs a platoon partner. Encarnacion and Lugo fit these needs about as well as you could prescribe. And don’t be too surprised to see Lugo slide to the hot corner, where neither Nico Eijpe nor Ingacio Venegas are the guys any fan of any playoff team really want patrolling.
The only real downgrade here is the swap of Cruz for Mota, but Mota can hit lefthanded pitching. Someone had to go to make room for salary, and with LHB Art O’Bryan already established at first base from the left side of the plate, it makes some sense that Cruz—who is 35 and hasn’t had a 2-WAR years since 2041—would be the guy.
Focusing on the future, Encarnacion is 25, but looking to get paid in Free Agency. Lugo at 23 still has a couple season of team control. Mota is a bit of a wild card—a solid enough player, but also the kind of guy lots of teams have a few of. Then there’s the albatross in the room—that $24M that is still owed a now 35 year old Cruz as he begins his fade. The deal helps here because it frees up cap space that could be used to possibly keep Encarnacion around, or for whatever other purpose is there.
Overall Assessment For Brooklyn:
Both are solid baseball players who have post season experience, which is obviously what this deal was designed to do for Brooklyn. The team is built for now and the next few seasons. By adding both Encarnacion and Lugo, GM Ben Heuring fills the team with guys who can play, and perhaps even more valuably, removes two players from the roster who would be less reliable. One assumes Miguel Santana (a replacement level player) will be optioned, and that either Eijpe or Venegas will be on the bus with him.
Some might question whether the club gave too much future, but we’ll get to that in a moment. A deep team is a winning team, and the Robins have opportunity now. So the deal makes sense.
Anyway, to me this deal is going to highlight the vision of Ben Heuring. Was he right in the assessment that the iron was hot now—that the Atlantic Division scrum was there for the taking. Victory goes to the bold, after all. Or at least that’s how the history books write it when you win. If this works out, Brooklyn will be a post season team, and possibly one that takes a bye as the division champion. If it doesn’t, well … the Robins should still be fine for the near future, anyway. It’s a solid team with an established superstar in the works in Sawyer Slizz.
Sit down and buckle up, though. Ben saw his hole, and he’s running his team through it.
It’s going to be fun to watch.
Sacramento’s Haul:1B Fernando Cruz
3B Luis Lucero
P Raj Mahadevan
P John Scovell
OF Jiao-long Ma
Lucero is presumably a throw in to make positions work for Sacramento somehow. I can’t see it any other way. Same for Cruz and the salary thing with the exception that assuming he rights the ship today, Cruz could be flipped for another piece of future, though it might cost some cash or cap space to do it. Given the Mad Popes are now officially bailing water from the lifeboat, I assume that’s going to happen—something that means this assessment is almost certainly incomplete.
That said, Cruz is the kind of guy who could well suddenly get hot and carry a team for a month, so there’s actually some chance the Popes do well this year, too. I’m not thinking that will happen, but you know, there’s a chance.
The real question for the Popes, though, is what these three kids will do. It’s a bit of a dangerous mix. Two kids in short A, and another in Rookie ball.
Mahadevan is listed as the #65 prospect in the BBA. I assume this is on the strength of that “11” knuckleball, which may be fair, I guess. Otherwise, I admit I don’t really see that in his 7/6/6 ratings or his minor league performance to date. At eighteen years old, you just don’t know. But he walked 66 guys in 46 innings, striking out only 12. Someone’s going to have to net that butterfly sometime. Scovell, also eighteen, is more interesting to me, but is not ranked in the top prospect lists. He also projects as a reliever—and perhaps one of those super-use relievers everyone is so fancy on right now. Overall, I like him. Ma is an interesting looking prospect with pop in his bat, which swings from the left side. All that’s good, but the word is that he’s going to need to improve the defense in order to play center field in the big leagues. He’s seventeen, though, it could happen.
Overall Assessment For Sacramento:
When you’re on the “Later” side of a “Now for Later” deal, it’s always filled with concern. Those kids need to pan out, right? Even if Cruz manages to win the Mad Popes a few games in 2044, he’ll likely be gone soon. This is all about development, and all about how you see uncertainty. It’s also about the question of whether the GM could have gotten more for their established players, and whether the deal fit some kind of plan.
In this case, the club traded two solid players under 25 years old, one with team control, and a journeyman first baseman. Could they have gotten more? Probably not, though no one but shoeless’s wine-besotted wife knows the extent of discussions surrounding those players. Given their ages and overall profiles, projecting these guys is hard. They could all three hit, and carry Sacramento to future titles, and they could just as well be expected to blow up and leave shoeless empty handed.
When you put this deal together with two others made over the past few days, the Pope’s mad plan seems fairly obvious, though—run the classic fire sale of cutting bait on anything of value now and push your capital into young guys in hope most pan out.
Give that, this is mission accomplished. Pope fans may not like it, but they’ll just have to deal with it. And maybe, just maybe, given the window of these players, the sun will come out again in or around 2047 or 2048?
