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Random question, as I'm sure someone else has mentioned this elsewhere, but I haven't found it. Could it be that Saunders was traded since the price of pitching is unexpectedly high?
Ervin Santana: 13.5mln x 4 years
Brandon McCarthy: 12 mln x 4 years
Maybe Z saw that mid-level pitching was too expensive, so he traded Sanders for pitching, assuming that a platoon would be a better use of resources?
Just posing another possible hypothesis, but would love to see what everyone thinks.