Welcome to the 2016 edition of the Tater Tot Fantasy Baseball Extravaganza.
A couple of quick hits for Friday then hopefully more next week.
Tom and I broke the league cherry yesterday with the first official trade of the year. And its a doozy, with stars going both direction.
Les Moles receives SP Felix Hernandez ($44) and OF Carlos Gonzalez ($23)
MBHB receives OF Andrew McCutchen ($78)--
So...This one is pretty one sided at face value. Tom picks up a pair of players, CarGo a perennial all-star and one of the few players in MLB with a chance to be a legitimate .300 hitter with 40 HRs. Felix is a multi-Cy Young winning superstar who really needs no more description than, "He has an entire section in his home stadium dedicated to people who wear t-shirts with his picture on it." They don't give those out for people like Ricky Nolasco or Matt Garza. In getting these two, Tom actually SAVES himself $10 in keeper costs. Doesn't sound like the commish can come out in a good way on this one. But this is where I can give a little insight because...well, I know what I am thinking. I wasn't planning on keeping CarGo anyways (essentially making this a Felix for Cutch deal), and I wanted to make a move for someone who would be a 6 category addition on offense...and to do so, I knew that I needed to give up something that was extremely valuable in addition to CarGo. Felix made the most sense because his salary is high enough, that acquiring a stud and keeping Felix would have made it difficult to go after anyone in the auction. So really, Tom and I both got exactly what we wanted; Tom got 2 keepers and saved some money, I got a superstar using a player I wasn't planning on keeping. In the long run, I think Tom ends up on the better end of the deal, but I am not going to be complaining.
Then Uncle Jimmy and Dusty completed their own deal just a day later.
UCCMA receives 1b Miguel Cabrera ($76)
The Dust Bunnies receive SP Chris Archer ($12) and SP Danny Salazar ($3).
This one is somewhat similar to the deal above, but with the added bonus of Dusty saving enough money that he actually might be able to field a pitching staff that doesn't include 8 $1 Twins this year.
On first glance, the deal seems to be heavily slanted towards Uncle Jimmy's Army of Darkness (new moniker I am trying out for his team this year...seriously, we might as well start calling them the Imperial Death Stars) because Cabrera has been one of the greatest hitters to ever walk the planet for the last decade or so. But Cabrera is coming off an injury that severely hampered his power production last season and he is one of the most expensive players in our fake little game. Luckily for Jimmy, he can rest easy knowing that a full season of TMGS, Kris Bryant, Carlos Correa and Mookie doing Mookie things will take some of the slack if Miggy does struggle this year.
Dusty gets 2 young, high upside starters in Archer and Salazar (and Archer is a superstar, but since he plays in the Tampa catwalk box in front of 18.4, approximate, people each game, not many people have caught on yet...it kills me that he was a Cub and that they gave him up for 2.5 seasons of Matt Garza and a box of not-yet Mike Trout salty pretzels) who he can add to Michael Wacha and, for the first time in 3 seasons, have a real life pitcher throwing the majority of his SP innings. If he smartly uses the $61 he saves, Dusty could be looking at having a team that is really good in addition to being really lucky.
In the short term, I give the edge here to Uncle Jimmy's Army of Death Stars (UJADS? Judges? Yes?!?!!!!!), because I'm not sure how Dusty will spend the savings and Jimmy was in the position to use some of his non-keeper assets to score a super-duper star. But it would not surprise me at all if by this time next year we are looking back at this trade as a win for Dusty Manager.
A nice kickoff to the hot stove season. Let me know if there are any other trades that are agreed upon.
More next week: Meet the new guys, who happen to be 2 separate people both named Steve.
