Or how about Albies, Mallex, Newcombe, Blair, and another decent arm like Whalen or Gant? I know most on here soured on Blair after his underwhelming call up this year, but he was one of our top 5 prospects preseason and was a top 50 prospect preseason in all of baseball by a couple of outlets. If Mallex still qualified as a prospect, he'd easily be our 2nd best prospect behind Albies.
If this was the package required, I'd have to pull the trigger.
A bit like the package I mentioned earlier, and as much as I'd prefer not to include Albies, I'd probably do that IF the brass were willing to follow it up by signing Turner to settle concerns about 3B production. A Sale acquisition is a clear "we're going for it" acquisition. Going for it with the question marks surrounding the offense simply doesn't seem to make sense given the fact that the window would be one year - at least at this moment. If you trade one of Wisler or Blair along with Newcomb, you have to be all but sure that someone from the group of Wisler/Sims/Fried/Weigel can step in for Colon in 2018, and you may even need two of them in the event you want to walk away from Dickey as well. Could they do that? There's certainly a chance. If they can't, then you're looking at having to start moving someone from the Acuna/Maitan/Allard/Soroka/Wentz/etc. group to add yet another SP.
JMO, but this shapes up a little like the situation when we went out and got Tex. He could well have been that last piece if we'd have had him for three years because there "could" have been more rotation help coming (Medlen, Locke, Hanson, Jo-Jo). Unfortunately that didn't work out because it didn't get here in time. If they used that capital AND spent the money (and pick) to give you an offense centered around Inciarte, Swanson, Freeman, Kemp, and Turner to support that staff, I'd be fine with it. I will admit that going all-in with Flowers as your primary Catcher, Jace as your primary 2B, and a platoon of Ruiz and Adonis at 3B seems a bit shaky to me.
The question to me is - "does the brass believe that we have enough CLOSE arms to cobble together a back-end that can be competitive for the next three years. If one of your top three starters goes down for a significant period, can Wisler, Sims, or our other "ho-hum" arms step in and provide you with at least an acceptable #3 and #4 starter since you're trading away a big chunk of the almost-ready depth"? If you have to trade from those other elite arms or Acuna or Maitan to get another rotation piece for the next three years, I get a little more worried - especially if you don't at least have an answer at 3B.
I'm all for going for it - but if you're going to do that, you have to do whatever it takes, including spending money and giving up draft picks.
