Lurking in a dark corner office at the end of the long hallway in the Valencia front office, there was a lone silhouette rifling through the printouts at his desk. The figure was reading boxscores from the previous 18 games. There was a L on the first printout, a L on the second printout, the third, the fourth. Every single printout of the was showing an L at the top of the page. It was like Oprah was handing out L's you get a L, you get a L and you get a L.
Scratching his head, Greathouse acknowledged to himself that we did do a fire sale about two months back that involved 5 players leaving and 10 arriving in return, but still the team was sitting at 44-54. Not playoff worthy, but not total spiral worthy either. The team was now sitting at 44-72 when he was looking for some sort of epiphany to ascend down from the BBA rulers of the universe.
Then, in a flash, the lightning struck and Greathouse knew what he had to do. Firesale 2.0!! He turned on the lights and screamed to Siri, "Call Charlotte!!! Call Montreal!!! Call my Mommy!!!", with a hint of desperation. At that point Greathouse started working two deals in parallel. Not knowing how far either of the deals would go, he jumped into both conversations headlong.
The deal with Charlotte happened rather quickly. The Flyers GM came in with a strong offer for Eduardo Moreno and possibly Luis Perez to help with their bullpen struggles. Then financial limits started coming into play and additional names started swirling around in a whirlwind of virtual conversation. When all was said and done, relievers Moreno and Perez were catching the next flight to meet their new teammates, while relievers Jameel Khanum and Qing-lai Ou-yang jumped onto the long midnight train from Charlotte to an undisclosed location to catch up to a chartered flight to meet with their new partners in crime. Also in the deal were relievers Timothy Lockwood and Jose Lopez who are heading to Redwood City in Single A and third baseman Jorge Garcia/right fielder Raul Morales who will land with the AAA club in Mars.
Meanwhile, the conversations with Montreal were a lot more drawn out. The conversation started with Valencia answering the callout for a DH that the Blazers were longer for in their pursuit for the Johnson Atlantic supremacy. Valencia then threw in from a previously spurned conversation that involved Koray Kapkin to help while their current centerfielder Ed Rooney who is projected to be out for the next five weeks. The idea of Kapkin along with Rivera then spurred the conversation into various directions. Just as the deal was almost to its final stage, a voice from the back asked, "Is Luis Gonzalez available?". Without hesitation Greathouse responded, Why yes he is!".
After an unsuccessful attempt at trying to somehow include Maximo Gousto in the deal, the dust settled and three additional Valencia players packed their bags to find the friendly skies to Montreal which included Luis Gonzalez, Vicente Rivera and Koray Kapkin. Leaving Montreal include Cisco Cintron who will be with the major league club in Valencia, SS Carlos Green, left fielder Eduardo Rodriguez and first baseman Raul Chavarria heading to the Russelville Rookie club, and first baseman Nikolas Buser/second baseman Juan Montoya heading to the AA squad in Saturn.
All in all, five players previously on the Valencia roster are gone, three new players are on the Valencia roster. There are also nine new faces going to the Valencia farm system. Although four of the five players had 50% of their salaries retained, Valencia managed to shed $35.1M from its payroll including an estimated $23.1M of that total being removed from next year's payroll. Sources state that after these moves, that the Valencia batboy will have the fourth highest salary of those returning in 2063. With Kapkin, Rivera and Perez all being free agents at the end of this season along with the youth movement coming in during the September callups, those three were not in the 2063 plan whether they were traded or not.
As for trading to two arch rivals in the Johnson League Atlantic division, Greathouse just said with a smile, "I hope both of those teams make it to the playoffs after that may the best team win."
