2060.4 Nakumara traded

[handaspencer]

In somewhat old news the Omaha Cyclones have moved their star ace pitcher to Twin Cities. This moved seemed to happen in the middle of the night and then the Omaha GM went silent without addressing the fan base. GM Spencer said in our team offices we experienced electronic issues and was without any equipment for almost 1 week. Obviously, the timing of this event was not ideal with such a big move, but we are more than happy to address the fan base and any concerns they might have since operations have been restored.

We have actually been talking about moving Takashi Nakamura for quite some time but all along we was targeting this deadline to make the move while we gauged his value. We considered moving him last season but after his injury last year we had to wait until this season. We had a player option facing us this coming offseason and obviously this was a risk and out of our control it was too risky to hang onto him at this stage of our rebuild. It was imperative we got value in return while we still had the control. We had probably 5-6 teams express interest in him and we spent quite a bit of time reviewing the offers but none of them really hit the spot we was looking for. The Twin Cities offer was the last offer we recieved and it was inline with what we felt his value should be.

We agreed to retain 50% of Nakamura's contract and we received Stan Lodge and Bartolo Linares along with 6 million dollars to help offset the retention dollars. What was appealing to us as an organization is we was able to get young guys who are ready or near ready for the Brewster. In addition both guys have the ability to play multiple positions so it provides us with additional flexibility with these guys. Lodge is the guy that draws the most attention but we are also excited about Linares and what he can provide us as well. If you don't believe in Linares its a good time to remind everyone he is a 10th round pick who has had consistent development through the years. We would love to have a roster full of these type guys that improve simply by working hard.

We plan to give Lodge and Linares some playing time this year and we might ask Lodge to play 2B for us some as well to continue improving at that position and see where they can go. In the meantime we do have a log jam on the right side of the infield and we are going to look at additional moves to clear this area out some and maybe improve the team in other areas. When you compare us to last year have slowly moved a lot of players around our team looks a lot different. We have been able to reduce payroll by around 35% and maintain the same winning percentage as last year. This first year our focus has been on getting the finances right without sacrificing wins and I like where we are at from that standpoint. We have also been able to add some younger talent this year as well. Moves such as moving Nakumara are never easy but sometimes its necessary to get back on the right patch. We are not done yet expect additional under the radar type moves in the coming days.