Is there any possible way to make a Yelich/Realmuto trade without watering down the cost with bad contracts? I'm not sure that there is if we don't include Albies or Acuna. How much surplus value do those two have combined? Just doing a quick look at it, it has to be in the neighborhood of 180 million dollars. And I think that is a pretty conservative estimate. Its honestly probably closer to 200 million. A trade like that would absolutely gut our farm system. Lets look at what it would take to get to 180 million in surplus value, without including Albies or Acuna.
A 60 grade pitcher carries about 34 million in surplus value (according to Fangraph's chart). I'll be super generous and give a 60 to 3 Braves pitching prospects (note that I actually don't think all three are 60 grades).
So if we include Soroka, Gohara, and Wright that gets us to 102 million. I'll even give us an extra 15 million there since Gohara has already made the majors and is extremely impressive. So 117 million.
A 55 grade pitcher is about 22 million. So lets once again be super generous and throw two "55" grade pitching prospects in there: Allard and Wentz. Including those two gets us to 151 million.
Outside of Acuna and Albies, we don't have a hitter anywhere close to a 60 grade. But once again, lets go super pozzy and say that we have two 55 grade hitting prospects: Riley and Pache. They aren't, but assuming the Marlins hold them in high esteem or something one of them is worth about 38 million. So now we are finally there! That is 189 million in surplus value.
The problem is that its possible Yelich and Realmuto are worth a bit more than that, just going off the calculator I used they are worth about 194 million. But even if the value is slightly lower, we are going to have to pay a premium to acquire them. So we need a little extra. So I'll throw in someone like Brett Cumberland to get us there.
So now the trade looks like this:
Marlins receive: Luiz Gohara, Mike Soroka, Kyle Wright, Kolby Allard, Joey Wentz, Christian Pache, and Brett Cumberland.
Braves receive: Christian Yelich and JT Realmuto
There is no universe in existence where I even come close to accepting this deal. I do realize that this is a very rough outline of what it would take. I'm just showing how cost prohibitive a trade like this would be. I was even really generous with the value of our own prospects and the cost was still stunning. But in all likelihood the Marlins are terrible enough that this could get done for more in the range of 150 million in surplus value and/or ask for a major leaguer in return to water down some of the value. But even then it would be a major hit to our farm system. I didn't watch us be terrible for 3 years and put together a top 3 farm system for 3 years of Realmuto and 5 years of Yelich when we aren't even ready to compete yet.
The more I think about it, the more I'm in the camp of not wanting any part of either player.
