If somebody's willing to give me what's behind curtain #2 AND curtain #3 to get Fister and his 120 OPS+ and control through 2016, I have to think about it. He's the sweet spot between Pineda (fabulous performance, yet-to-be-demonstrated health and stamina, lots of club control) and Vargas (health and stamina, pitches late into games but hits FA sooner and not as consistently dominant even as Fister).
Vargas is also a lefty while Felix, Pineda, Fister and Beavan are all righties, and Bedard will (likely) be on the FA market soon. Paxton and Hultzen are lefties so we wouldn't necessarily have an entire rotation of righties for long, but Jack likes lefties in Safeco.
I love Fister. I'm so very happy to see him succeeding, and the dude is everything you'd want out of a guy with his skillset. Such a bulldog.
Now, the As had this happen with Aaron Harang several years ago, when he'd been interesting but not nearly what Fister has been so far this year. They had a surplus of arms, though, and dealt him for the big bat they needed...
Jose Guillen.
THAT'S what I don't want to do. No overpriced 3-month vet rentals for 6 years of a demonstrated talent.
But you aren't gonna get Moustakas for Doug Fister, even if Doug is in line for 15-20 WAR over the next 6 years. Bats are inherently more reliable than arms. You'd give up 6 years of Fister for around 3 of a major league bat, at least in my opinion.
If it was 3 months ago we might have had Alex Gordon, but he's gonna be hard to pry out of the Royals now.
Still, there are some options.
This is not the sort of trade that comes up a lot. Most teams do not have a surplus of cheap, Major-league-conquering pitching that they can afford to deal, so the parameters of putting a Fister on the market aren't really clear. I would think a healthy Bedard would be the normal trade option, followed by Vargas, then Fister because his value is so hard to peg. You'd THINK he'd be one of the most valuable trade pieces in the sport, but by simply going on the market his value gets diminished. After all, if he were 20 WAR just sitting there for a bargain price, why would we be trading him? So he must not be what he looks like.
Now, the interesting option to me is trading Bedard and League, and then sticking Vargas in the pen to close, but with Jason's lack of experience there and no overpowering weapons, I don't think we'd go that route. If a guy can go 9 innings no problem then you don't usually ask him to close.
But it would be selling high on League as an All-Star with a year left on his contract, and would help fix our too-many-starters issue.
As would moving Paxton to the pen a la Papelbon. We DO have options that don't involve trading our current starters.
I just think for a major-league-producing bat we're gonna need to trade either our young guns (Paxton or Walker as the headliner plus a couple of pieces, minimum) or a current rotation member.
We can't keep everyone, and by passing on Rendon for another arm, we created more of a logjam rather than alleviating the issue. That call plus our lack of other plus bats coming up any time soon kinda forces our hand.
A trade IS coming. It's just a matter of who stays, and who goes.
~G
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