Blow up

As to the OP's question, we would have the craziest farm system in MLB history. But we would also have the worst MLB team in history. And at some point you can't really get the return in prospects these guys are worth because there's simply not enough left. The White Sox have several of the top prospects, and they're not about to trade them. You're not going to get Freeman's true value back in a deal with the Yankees that revolves around prospects. And if you did end up with a bunch of top 100 guys and several in the top 10-20, how are you going to get value back for Dansby?

Beyond the fact that this exercise is fairly pointless, as we're not going to consider trading Freeman and probably not Inciarte, I don't think it's wise, either. We have the pieces to be able to put a competitive team on the field next year without selling much of the farm. Trading Freeman would bring back a haul, but it would be a haul that is a ways off and wouldn't really help us. So then you're just sort of punting further ahead. If Albies and Acuna come up by early next year, you're still talking about losing 2-3 years of their control before you're really contending. So by then, do you also trade them?

At some point you have to keep your best players if you're trying to legitimately build something. Trading Freeman just puts us further behind.

Stay the course. Keep Freeman, keep Inciarte, keep Teheran unless you get an offer worthy of his value at near his peak. Trade Phillips, trade Garcia, trade Adams unless you can't get anything of substance, trade any bullpen pieces with good value. Play Dansby every day, put Camargo and Rodriguez in the lineup, and finish the year out. Trade some of the surplus pitching if necessary (talking maybe a Wentz, Sims, and/or Fried, if teams value him) to get a 3B who can be an asset. Sign a decent SP in FA. Bring Albies and Acuna up a couple weeks into next year. Cut Matt Kemp.

Then you're looking at a lineup with Freeman, Dansby, Acuna, Albies, Inciarte, Flowers, decent 3B, Markakis, and you're going to score some runs and be pretty fun to watch. You have a pitching staff of Teheran, Folty, decent FA, Dickey, Newcomb. It's not a great starting rotation, but it could be solid.

Then you continue to sell off any pieces that aren't going to be part of the future or are surplus farm pieces, and continue to call guys up as they're ready. You'll hopefully have Allard, Soroka, and Wright ready at least by 2019 and suddenly you could have a promising, good young rotation.

There will be growing pains throughout, but it's not time to continue trading off actual pieces of the future (which Freeman and Inciarte absolutely are) for prospects. It's time to build a team.
 
smootness said:
As to the OP's question, we would have the craziest farm system in MLB history. But we would also have the worst MLB team in history. And at some point you can't really get the return in prospects these guys are worth because there's simply not enough left. The White Sox have several of the top prospects, and they're not about to trade them. You're not going to get Freeman's true value back in a deal with the Yankees that revolves around prospects. And if you did end up with a bunch of top 100 guys and several in the top 10-20, how are you going to get value back for Dansby?

Beyond the fact that this exercise is fairly pointless, as we're not going to consider trading Freeman and probably not Inciarte, I don't think it's wise, either. We have the pieces to be able to put a competitive team on the field next year without selling much of the farm. Trading Freeman would bring back a haul, but it would be a haul that is a ways off and wouldn't really help us. So then you're just sort of punting further ahead. If Albies and Acuna come up by early next year, you're still talking about losing 2-3 years of their control before you're really contending. So by then, do you also trade them?

At some point you have to keep your best players if you're trying to legitimately build something. Trading Freeman just puts us further behind.

Stay the course. Keep Freeman, keep Inciarte, keep Teheran unless you get an offer worthy of his value at near his peak. Trade Phillips, trade Garcia, trade Adams unless you can't get anything of substance, trade any bullpen pieces with good value. Play Dansby every day, put Camargo and Rodriguez in the lineup, and finish the year out. Trade some of the surplus pitching if necessary (talking maybe a Wentz, Sims, and/or Fried, if teams value him) to get a 3B who can be an asset. Sign a decent SP in FA. Bring Albies and Acuna up a couple weeks into next year. Cut Matt Kemp.

Then you're looking at a lineup with Freeman, Dansby, Acuna, Albies, Inciarte, Flowers, decent 3B, Markakis, and you're going to score some runs and be pretty fun to watch. You have a pitching staff of Teheran, Folty, decent FA, Dickey, Newcomb. It's not a great starting rotation, but it could be solid.

Then you continue to sell off any pieces that aren't going to be part of the future or are surplus farm pieces, and continue to call guys up as they're ready. You'll hopefully have Allard, Soroka, and Wright ready at least by 2019 and suddenly you could have a promising, good young rotation.

There will be growing pains throughout, but it's not time to continue trading off actual pieces of the future (which Freeman and Inciarte absolutely are) for prospects. It's time to build a team.
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The other thing is that if we went that route....I doubt we are going for prospects. I think we'd need at least one piece (likely the main piece) to be major league ready. We'd have to get a Bregman or the like from the Dodgers. So we'd get young, controllable guys but I don't think we'd go the prospect only route on a Freeman deal.

The farm system debate will be interesting....especially if the Sox and Braves promote guys like Moncada who then technically aren't in the rankings.
 
50PoundHead said:
You are always good at blueprints even if I don't agree with them, but I want no part of Schwarber unless we were to immediately flip him to an AL team for someone who could play in the field.

If it's about competing with the Dodgers and other big payroll teams, that's probably never going to happen on the ledger sheet. Which is why we have to be careful how we would load up the minors in addition to whom we load the minor leagues with. Ideally, the guys come in waves. You just can't throw 8 youngsters out there all at once for aesthetic and contract reasons as they relate to arbitration.
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I'm not married to the idea of Schwarber. But I do see value in the type of trade I laid out AND tried to address the needs of the other team as part of the exercise - Cubs could afford to give up Schwarber and have a need for a guy like Inciarte. Schwarber certainly has a bat. He needs a defensive home. Under my scenario the Braves get him and park him at AAA for a year to learn 1B, also to refine his hitting, while Adams/Kemp play 1B. I don't care how bad the team looks in 2018 since under this scenario I am building for 2020 and beyond.

As for having 8 young guys on the field at the same time, I agree you wouldn't want that, even if you could do it which my scenario says would be possible. However, later on, I referenced that you could add FA talent to mix with the young talent as you build the team. For instance, I like the idea of Lucroy to pair with Flowers even though Lucroy isn't the same player he was 3 years ago simply because I think solid veteran catching leadership is vital to young pitching, which the Braves would have. I guess the point was that IF you trade Freeman, Inciarte and Teheran, coupled with an expected rise in payroll space, you would have room to add FA veterans to the team at the time when you want them and need them.

As for the waves of talent point, I completely agree. I'm working on the theory that you start from now and work forward, so every prospect here now is still here moving forward which provides the beginnings of the waves I want to create. I would spend the next two years creating future waves in the form of high draft picks and additional talent acquired through trade. So, if I signed Arrieta, Eovaldi and Buchholz plus Wade Davis, McGee, etc. this offseason, I would be doing so with the idea in mind that I would trade at least some of them at the deadline in 2018. Same goes for Adams and maybe even Folty (since he will be approaching FA by 2020) all given the right returns.

It's simply a mental exercise and nothing more as we all agree it will never happen.
 
Horsehide Harry said:
I'm not married to the idea of Schwarber. But I do see value in the type of trade I laid out AND tried to address the needs of the other team as part of the exercise - Cubs could afford to give up Schwarber and have a need for a guy like Inciarte. Schwarber certainly has a bat. He needs a defensive home. Under my scenario the Braves get him and park him at AAA for a year to learn 1B, also to refine his hitting, while Adams/Kemp play 1B. I don't care how bad the team looks in 2018 since under this scenario I am building for 2020 and beyond.

As for having 8 young guys on the field at the same time, I agree you wouldn't want that, even if you could do it which my scenario says would be possible. However, later on, I referenced that you could add FA talent to mix with the young talent as you build the team. For instance, I like the idea of Lucroy to pair with Flowers even though Lucroy isn't the same player he was 3 years ago simply because I think solid veteran catching leadership is vital to young pitching, which the Braves would have. I guess the point was that IF you trade Freeman, Inciarte and Teheran, coupled with an expected rise in payroll space, you would have room to add FA veterans to the team at the time when you want them and need them.

As for the waves of talent point, I completely agree. I'm working on the theory that you start from now and work forward, so every prospect here now is still here moving forward which provides the beginnings of the waves I want to create. I would spend the next two years creating future waves in the form of high draft picks and additional talent acquired through trade. So, if I signed Arrieta, Eovaldi and Buchholz plus Wade Davis, McGee, etc. this offseason, I would be doing so with the idea in mind that I would trade at least some of them at the deadline in 2018. Same goes for Adams and maybe even Folty (since he will be approaching FA by 2020) all given the right returns.

It's simply a mental exercise and nothing more as we all agree it will never happen.
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I think it's likely the Cubs move Schwarber over the winter. With Happ's arrival, Schwarber is superfluous. This could be deal where the Cubs get a decent prospect or two back to stem some of the depletion they've experienced over the past two seasons.
 
50PoundHead said:
I think it's likely the Cubs move Schwarber over the winter. With Happ's arrival, Schwarber is superfluous. This could be deal where the Cubs get a decent prospect or two back to stem some of the depletion they've experienced over the past two seasons.
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It's a shame he's so bad defensively. I would love to add him, and there's part of me that might take a chance on him as a catcher even to buy low and get his bat on board.
 
smootness said:
As to the OP's question, we would have the craziest farm system in MLB history. But we would also have the worst MLB team in history. And at some point you can't really get the return in prospects these guys are worth because there's simply not enough left. The White Sox have several of the top prospects, and they're not about to trade them. You're not going to get Freeman's true value back in a deal with the Yankees that revolves around prospects. And if you did end up with a bunch of top 100 guys and several in the top 10-20, how are you going to get value back for Dansby?

Beyond the fact that this exercise is fairly pointless, as we're not going to consider trading Freeman and probably not Inciarte, I don't think it's wise, either. We have the pieces to be able to put a competitive team on the field next year without selling much of the farm. Trading Freeman would bring back a haul, but it would be a haul that is a ways off and wouldn't really help us. So then you're just sort of punting further ahead. If Albies and Acuna come up by early next year, you're still talking about losing 2-3 years of their control before you're really contending. So by then, do you also trade them?

At some point you have to keep your best players if you're trying to legitimately build something. Trading Freeman just puts us further behind.

Stay the course. Keep Freeman, keep Inciarte, keep Teheran unless you get an offer worthy of his value at near his peak. Trade Phillips, trade Garcia, trade Adams unless you can't get anything of substance, trade any bullpen pieces with good value. Play Dansby every day, put Camargo and Rodriguez in the lineup, and finish the year out. Trade some of the surplus pitching if necessary (talking maybe a Wentz, Sims, and/or Fried, if teams value him) to get a 3B who can be an asset. Sign a decent SP in FA. Bring Albies and Acuna up a couple weeks into next year. Cut Matt Kemp.

Then you're looking at a lineup with Freeman, Dansby, Acuna, Albies, Inciarte, Flowers, decent 3B, Markakis, and you're going to score some runs and be pretty fun to watch. You have a pitching staff of Teheran, Folty, decent FA, Dickey, Newcomb. It's not a great starting rotation, but it could be solid.

Then you continue to sell off any pieces that aren't going to be part of the future or are surplus farm pieces, and continue to call guys up as they're ready. You'll hopefully have Allard, Soroka, and Wright ready at least by 2019 and suddenly you could have a promising, good young rotation.

There will be growing pains throughout, but it's not time to continue trading off actual pieces of the future (which Freeman and Inciarte absolutely are) for prospects. It's time to build a team.
Click to expand...

I think my whole point in this thread , is not if might go this route (we will not), and also that I want us to go this route (I don't). It's more that fact that the White Sox have done well by trading everyone of value for the most part. If we really did the same thing as they have done....there would be no discussion as to who would have the best farm
 
TheBravos said:
I think my whole point in this thread , is not if might go this route (we will not), and also that I want us to go this route (I don't). It's more that fact that the White Sox have done well by trading everyone of value for the most part. If we really did the same thing as they have done....there would be no discussion as to who would have the best farm
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Well, yeah, of course.
 
TheBravos said:
I think my whole point in this thread , is not if might go this route (we will not), and also that I want us to go this route (I don't). It's more that fact that the White Sox have done well by trading everyone of value for the most part. If we really did the same thing as they have done....there would be no discussion as to who would have the best farm
Click to expand...

Well, yeah, the Braves had much stronger assets to sell
 
sturg33 said:
Freeman, Heyward, Upton, Kimbrel, Simmons, Wood, Gattis, Teheran >>> Sale, Quintana, Eaton, Frazier, Robertson

You disagree?
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The only asset on the same level as Sale, Quintana, and Eaton is Freeman, and that has only happened in the last year. 1 year of Heyward and 1 year of Upton is not really worth mentioning in the same category. Simmons was a good asset, and Kimbrel was a good asset. Teheran, too. Wood and Gattis? Meh, at the time. So in my opinion, we have one really good asset that at the time wasn't as good, and had 3 good assets. I mean, sure, if you packaged them all together they would be worth a bunch, but that's not feasible.

If you're talking at the time the rebuild started, I'm ranking those assets like this:
1. Sale
2. Quintana
3. Eaton
4. Freeman
5. Teheran
6. Kimbrel
7. Simmons
8. Heyward
9. Upton
10. Wood
11. Frazier
12. Robertson
13. Gattis

To get top returns, you need top assets. The White Sox had those top assets. We had good ones, and you can certainly argue we shouldn't have held onto Teheran and Freeman. But did we have much stronger assets to sell? Heeeeeck no.
 
Why consider this? The current rebuild is nearing the finish line. Next year we win the wildcard, two yrs from now we are a championship contender.
 
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