Shelby to AZ for E. Inciarte, A. Blair, and Dansby Swanson

I'm happy with what we got, but I agree with striker about the ARI side. They have a window, and Shelby fits that window. They lose Goldschmidt's prime years if they wait around to rebuild with kids. They may end up losing the gamble, but it's a reasonable gamble.

Oh, I agree with their general approach of trading from depth (OF) and prospects to get an MLB starter. The concept is more than defensible. My contention is just that they got absolutely slaughtered on the asset exchange. They should have gotten a much more valuable SP than Miller for that package, or given much less to get Miller.

In the past 15 months, the ARI front office has taken the organization from a very positive place (organically building to be a consistent contender, new TV deal), to a very negative place (spending recklessly in $ and talent and showing themselves to be among the worst in the game at player valuation). They have willfully turned themselves into a "window" team unnecissarily, and their poor execution of that process has made that "window" a lot smaller than it should have been.
 
Maybe I am alone here but I don't view this trade as being such a huge win. I think people are making assumptions about Swanson because he was the #1 pick. He projects as an above average player but not an all star. I liked Blair coming out of the draft and haven't paid much attention to him since. I see him as a #4 starter and that's not meant as an insult to him. Inciarte is an around an average starting centerfielder. I am glad we got some quantity and this trade won't flop based on 1 prospect.

My only real complaint is that we should not have signed Markakis. We would have the #1 pick going into 2016 and I would have resigned Heywood.
 
Maybe I am alone here but I don't view this trade as being such a huge win. I think people are making assumptions about Swanson because he was the #1 pick. He projects as an above average player but not an all star. I liked Blair coming out of the draft and haven't paid much attention to him since. I see him as a #4 starter and that's not meant as an insult to him. Inciarte is an around an average starting centerfielder. I am glad we got some quantity and this trade won't flop based on 1 prospect.

My only real complaint is that we should not have signed Markakis. We would have the #1 pick going into 2016 and I would have resigned Heywood.

I think you can be certain of that.
 
Teheran for Soler would be great, especially if we could somehow find a way to trade Markakis at peak value. I think he'll have more power and less of everything else next year, so it would be great to trade him before his value plummets.

Yes it would be a good deal value wise but I'm just not sure I want to trade Teheran after moving Shelby. We have a lot of good young pitching but we don't have a lot of top of the rotation types outside of Newcomb and potentially Fried if healthy. Teheran has pitched at a very high level and we need him to compliment the group we have.
 
Surprised that nobody's launched into a rant yet. Even the malcontents are OK with this deal? :JSIDK:

Don't like the idea of hitching the wagon to unproven prospects in hopes of being competitive. Eventually the team has to have MLB players who are proven and get paid for their services. This cheap idea of trying to field a team doesn't resonate with me.
 
Respectfully, I disagree with the comparison of this deal to the Olivera deal. This ARI deal is an order of magnitude more lopsided than the Olivera deal. It's the Touki Touissant deal on a much larger scale. If we had the choice of taking a mulligan on the Olivera deal or doing this ARI deal, I would take this ARI deal without hesitation. I'd suggest that if you asked 100 MLB executives which of the two deals were more lopsided, somewhere between 98 and 100 would say the ARI deal (got to account for the chance that Stewart and LaRussa are asked).

I think the dispute here might be one of definition and vocabulary. When looked at objectively, this trade looks very lopsided. The Braves are getting back much more talent than they gave up. It looks, as you say, orders of magnitude more lopsided than the Olivera deal.

However, you can't always look at trades in a vacuum. You have to look at the relative needs of a team and the availability of players that fit those needs. Sometimes you have to overpay to get what you need. A deal can be lopsided and not particularly bad.

Suppose you're starving. I come along. I have a case of canned food and an Xbox and am willing to sell you either one for $1,000. If you buy the food you're vastly overpaying for it. If you buy the Xbox, you're overpaying but it's not overpaying nearly as badly. Which is a better deal for you? The food.

That's what we have here. The Diamondbacks overpaid but they got what they needed. They didn't have much in the way of reasonable alternatives so they paid the price rather than do without.

The Braves didn't overpay nearly as badly for Olivera but a 30 year old who doesn't really have a position and who hasn't proven he can hit just doesn't make any sense for the Braves. The fact that we overpaid for a guy who doesn't fit what we're doing makes that trade WAY worse for us than the Miller trade was for Arizona.
 
Suppose you're starving. I come along. I have a case of canned food and an Xbox and am willing to sell you either one for $1,000. If you buy the food you're vastly overpaying for it. If you buy the Xbox, you're overpaying but it's not overpaying nearly as badly. Which is a better deal for you? The food.

That's a dick move.
 
Scott Lauber of the Boston Herald said an equivalent package from Boston would have been Yoan Moncada, Henry Owens and Jackie Bradley Jr.
 
Suppose you're starving. I come along. I have a case of canned food and an Xbox and am willing to sell you either one for $1,000. If you buy the food you're vastly overpaying for it. If you buy the Xbox, you're overpaying but it's not overpaying nearly as badly. Which is a better deal for you? The food.

The smart person would take the Xbox, find someone who wants an xbox, and get more than a case of canned food for it.
 
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