KingKat

I know my reply was really good and quite precise but I have to admit once again that this is better if only slightly.

They traded that pitcher, what's his name, to Cleveland. I think it's the same guy that Baltimore gave a big contract to. You know that guy.

I like it on paper but the black hole it opens up at shortstop is pretty hard to swallow for a contending team and the optics of trading the superstar shortstop you just aquired would be terrible. I think you'd have to pass but it would be painful to do so.

I hadn't considered the Colorado effect on Reyes. The Rockies might be in the best position of any team to rebuild Reyes' value.

You'd have to be pretty down on Tulo to think the Reyes deal is preferable just on account of it being shorter.

I wonder if Kawa or someone from Buffalo gets called up for a day? Presumably, Hawkins won't be here any sooner than Tulo which would leave the roster a man short.

Even if Tulo and Reyes turn out to be the same guy (not a given but a possibility) and even if all that's being accomplished by swapping one for the other is pushing the s***** years further back, that's totally worth it for the Jays. In the short term, the core got stronger and the s*** end of the Reyes deal dissapeared. That's worth cashing in some future for.

Good time to remind people that Pompey is a switch hitter.

Tulo's deal though expensive is still a positive value deal and the opportunity to land a shortstop of his calibre is rare enough to give him a quality of opportunity boost. If the best they could do is two good but not elite prospects and a bad contract than they bungled this by either negotiating poorly or holding on to him too long.

Either they are fortunate enough have something good already lined up for Reyes or they did not value the Reyes contract properly.

I actualy think this is a crap trade for Colorado. There's absolutely no reason for them to have to take a player like Reyes in a Tulo deal. Castro, Hoffman is a good return for Tulo straight up. Castro, Hoffman with Reyes as extra baggage is pretty underwhelming. (I'm basically considering Tinoco as the price for Hawkins).

Pretty much any lineup that has Pillar and the LF at the bottom works. That's how deep the lineup is.

Almost makes it seem like they considered the Reyes contract a positive assett which is pretty crazy of them. He's not flat out terrible but his contract sure is.

Yeah I have no problem with that but maybe a solid OF with an expiring contract can come aboard in a deal and Pompey can be saved for a september call-up and spring training 2016 audition which I would be fine with as well. Trading deadline is only a few days away so I expect the situation to be addressed one way or another very shortly.

Good deal. Reyes's contract though shorter was pretty much a sunk cost at this point. Tulo's deal is longer but he at least has a shot of living up to it and the cost in prospects was quite manageable.

OF has to be addressed either through trade or through promotion.

A this point if you're an offensive player and you're not excited about joining this lineup, you're a f***ing idiot.

I'm not saying you're wrong but that doesn't really make sense to me. I mean I can see casuals feeling that way but a pretty significant part of this board thought taking him off his development plan was stupid in the first place and yet some of those same people want to devalue him as a prospect because of it.

I don't understand the casual dismissal of Castro. He still a young guy who throws extremely hard. If he was still dominating A+ as a starter like he should be, we would all be excited about him. Aggressive promotions shouldn't diminish him as a prospect. I'll miss him more than Hoffman to be honest.

IIRC, it said Jesus Tinoco somewhere ITT.

I think 5+ years of Tulo is a lot more desirable than 3+ years of Reyes at this point. We're basically setting back the clock here and potentially elite years out of shortstop during the Bautista/Encarnacion window. That's worth a lot to this team and I think there's reason to be somewhat optimistic that Tulo will decline more gracefully than Reyes. Both have injury issues but Tulo has always been a better defender. He should maintain a better level of shortstop play in his declining years and I think that will go a long way in making the back end of his contract easier to live with. Beyond the fact that people seem to prefer surly white guys to happy brown guys, fans also really have a disproportionate dislike of defensive miscues and play that doesn't look fundamentaly sound. I'm pretty sure that even if they were both brown and a the same stage in their career, Tulo would get more love on account of solid defense and it's not an illegimate preference. Defensive value is not more important than offensive value but it's a bit more stable and should give a declining Tulo a better floor than a declining Reyes and he's not exactly Ryan Goins at the plate either. As far as preferring pitching over Tulo, you can't be so single-minded in your pursuits as to ignore obvious opportunities to improve your team. If you can't get better starting pitching, the next best thing is improving the defense and bullpen and this trade does both of those thing. You're basically accomplishing three things here. Getting a shortstop upgrade on both sides of the ball, getting rid of bad contract that's now redundant and getting a reliever. And to make it even better, for all practical purposes, you're only trading away one prospect for each of those things. That's great value. Assuming that the Stroman for Cueto rumours are true, would that have really been prefferable? Is it better to make a bad trade just because it involves a starting pitcher than to make a good one that doesn't? Jays might still add starting pitching anyways but whether or not they do doesn't change the merit of this trade.

So basically no. AA said in the off season that he would use the DH spot to rest Reyes and it never happened. As long as there's a Navarro/Encarnacion/Smoak logjam, no reason to expect that they will have an easier time finding DH starts for Tulo than they did for Reyes.

Is there any reason to expect Tulo to make more DH starts than Reyes was?

That's absolutely true but that doesn't mean the Reds weren't holding out for Stroman all the same. You don't necessarily negotiate the same way with every gm. Some you might hold a harder line with and some you might accomodate more.

Dero = Derosa, Mark