Horse trading is an art of making shrewd negotiations. In the MLB, TB is well known when a player reach a high value, they put them on the market and maximize their return (w/ no emotions). This year,on the buying side, SD has displayed very good horse trading. Although they lost on the Snell trade to TB, they fleeced the Cubs out of Darvich, they completely plundered the Pirates out of Musgrove. SD saw that the Cubs & PIT is very motivated to sell & they exploited their situation.
MN's off season is made up of finding pitchers that nobody wants & retreads that they know that they can tweak & signing economical positional players. To give them credit they have pretty good success at it. W/ FA's that they value they tend to over pay. Making trades, they seem not able to see the opportunities that are out there. For a long time I`ve advocated to take advantage on obtaining pitchers from PIT. PIT has the ability to see pitching talent but unable to untap it.Musgrove isunder valued & under paid, he has good stuff& a lot of potential when fully developed a great trading target. Musgrove was offered to MN for Larnach which isfair but MN tend to over value their bats (Example: Rosario) so they lose out on opportunities. Even though they didn't want to give Larnach they should have counter offered w/ lesser prospects, PIT has shown they would have accepted any offer.
3 years of Musgrove talent & upside at $4.2 MM (for a couple lower prospects)or 1 year of Happ at $8 MM? Happ is LHP that our dominate RH hitting division will clobber (especially CW). What is done is done but we can still try to approach the Cubs for Baez to finalize on an opportunity. Also I notice that if they have atrading target they usually cave on the opponent's demand.
I like this FO but wish they had a little more horse trading in them.
