Okay, I'll be that guy and say that I wouldn't be comfortable with trading our 4 top prospects. Carrasco is a pitcher and can't exactly be labeled as a workhorse. Yes he's elite but pitchers are pitchers.
That's not to say that I wouldn't consider giving up 3 of them, but 4 seems like overkill.
Yes, they've both had it in the past, and Anderson among his many injuries also underwent TJS. Like Dinger said Jose Fernandez is back and he's as good as ever.
Edit: it looks like Cole never had it, for some reason I thought he did. My mistake.
There's more than one, deGrom and Cole have both had TJS in the past, Pineda and Brett Anderson have had significant injuries, including TJS for the latter. There are probably more that I'm missing.
We don't really know what the cost would be, and who could we realistically say that we can trade for that is better? It's nice to think that hypothetically every player is available for a fair package, but a lot of high value players simply aren't on the block.
Way to completely miss the point. Fiers strikes out nearly a batter per inning at the big league level while Hoffman struggles to get 6 K/9 as an older player against much inferior competition.
Odds are easily against Hoffman ever becoming as good as Fiers is right now, and a lot of that is just from the usual attrition rate for pitching prospects.
Yeah who wants to see Bautista, Donaldson, and Encarnacion (overpriced "star" players acquired from other teams) when you could have the likes of Matt Dean/Mitch Nay, Rowdy Tellez and Anthony Alford filling their positions instead?