The Rebuilding Has Begun

After another disappointing season (is there any other kind in Salem?), we here in the front office took a good, hard, look at our roster for the 2016 season. We saw a front-line ace in Max Scherzer, a powerful young rookie in Kris Bryant, a handful of quality bats, and some decent arms in the bullpen. There were several glaring holes in the lineup, the back end of the rotation was very weak, and the folks down the hall in our budget department told us we wouldn't have enough cash to fill those holes through free agency.

That left us with a few options: trade away our young talent (most notably, Rafael Devers and Trea Turner), play out the 2016 season with what we had and hope to sneak into the playoffs with yet another wild card win, or sell off our best players and build a winning team for 2017. Ultimately, for only the second time in our franchise's history, we chose that third option.

A lot has happened since we made that difficult decision. We have literally overturned half of our roster, as only 25 players on our current roster remain from last season. We made a total of a dozen trades this winter, involving forty five players. Let's take a look at each of those trades:

11/22/15: Salem traded Scott Kazmir to Kansas City for Drew Hutchison.

The winter trading season got off to a dubious start when the very first trade we completed ended with our trading partner asking why on earth we made the offer. It's always disheartening to know that we could have asked for, and received, more in return.

We made the offer because we believe that Drew Hutchison represented a unique "buy-low" opportunity. In the past, we have taken gambles on pitchers like Hutchison (such as Javier Vazquez, Jon Lester, and John Danks) who had great stuff, but suffered through very poor MLB performances in the previous year. Hutchison fits the profile of the type of pitcher that we like to target. If he gets an opportunity to become a part of Toronto's starting rotation this MLB season, we feel that he will be a very valuable pitcher for us in 2017.

11/22/15: Salem traded Max Scherzer and Joaquim Soria to Ravenswood for Steven Matz, Rob Refsnyder, and Aaron Judge.

Scherzer represented our best trade bait, so it was important for us to scan the entire market to ensure that we were getting the very best deal possible. With this trade, we received one player who should make an immediate impact in 2017 (Matz), another who has a very high ceiling, but will likely not make an impact until a few years down the road (Judge), and a third who will likely not make as much of an impact, but who should be a solid major league utility player for years to come (Refsnyder.) We are especially excited to see how Matz develops during the next MLB season, as he has the potential to become a front line starter.

11/22/15: Salem traded Justin Wilson to Flagstaff for Adrian Rondon, Andrew Susac, and Scott Schebler.

We have had our eye on Rondon for a long time, and we're still seething over Greg Newgard's pilfering of him, right out from under our nose, during last year's farm draft. Fortunately for us, Rondon had an awful debut in the Gulf Coast League, hitting just .166, and struck out 57 times in 43 games. That performance was fortunate because it gave us the opportunity to acquire him. We're giving him a mulligan on last season, as he was only sixteen years old, and has far too many tools to dismiss as a failed prospect.

Susac was the top prospect for the Giants just a year ago, and is another "buy-low" prospect coming off a poor MLB performance in 2015. Schebler doesn't have a very high ceiling, but he could be one of those late-bloomers who becomes a valuable role player within the next year or two -- especially after this recent trade in MLB.

11/22/15: Salem traded Justin Miller and Joaquin Benoit to Los Altos for Yadier Alvarez and Michael Pineda.

We fielded several offers for both Miller and Benoit, and ultimately decided that Alvarez was the best of the lot. Although he's a complete unknown at this point, his potential is off the charts. We later flipped both Alvarez and Pineda to acquire even more players with future impact.

11/22/15: Salem traded Michael Pineda to Kansas City for Travis d'Arnaud, Renato Nunez, and Juan Nicasio.

With the trade of Yadier Molina, and the free agency of Buster Posey, our franchise was left without a catcher, aside from Susac. We remedied that with this trade for d'Arnaud. We believe he is on the verge of a breakthrough season, and we consider this to be one of our most important trades this winter. In addition, we also added Nunez, who is a very good prospect coming off of another quality minor league season. At age 21, he owns a career OPS above .800.

11/22/15: Salem traded Tuffy Gosewich to Charlotte for Ryan Zimmerman and Shohei Otani.

We made this deal with the assumption that we could release Zimmerman with a $4.6 million penalty. Unfortunately, our legal department didn't perform their due diligence, and we ended up with a very expensive prospect. Needless to say, those people have been fired.

That said, we are huge fans of Otani, and we probably would have made that deal even if we had known his true price tag. Otani is very likely to become a Cy Young caliber major leaguer as soon as he comes to the US. That probably won't happen until several years from now, so we will have to be patient. Unfortunately, patience has never been a hallmark of the Salem franchise.

11/28/15: Salem traded Chris Coghlan, Freddie Freeman, Luis Valbuena, and Yadier Alvarez to St. Louis for Jorge Soler, Starlin Castro, Justin Upton, and Jon Gray.

This trade began when the Granite State Lightning basically paid the Apostles to take Justin Upton's contract off their hands. We immediately contacted St. Louis GM Bobby Sylvester to see if he was looking to dump that contract as well. The perception seems to be that Upton has been a disappointment, and that 2015 was a particularly disappointing season for him. However, we see a player at the peak age of 28, who has hit 25+ home runs for three straight seasons (in an era of depressed power), and is an above-average defender.

We figured out early in the negotiation that Bobby wasn't looking to merely dump that contract. After several back-and-forth offers, we arrived at this eight player trade. We have been after Soler for a long time, and we are ecstatic to have finally landed him. Although we temper our enthusiasm a little with the fact that he reminds us of a young Austin Kearns (huge body, not particularly athletic, flashes of power and huge potential, strikes out way too much), we believe Soler could be a star.

We're also very excited to add Gray to a pitching staff that is shaping up to be an intriguing lot. Gray, Matz, Hutchison, Rubby De La Rosa, Raisel Iglesias, Erik Johnson, John Lamb, and Stephen Strasburg are all under the age of 27. We're hoping that at least two or three of those guys turn out to be aces.

The last piece of this trade, Castro, is another guy, like Upton, who is considered to be a disappointment, and yet has accomplished a lot at a young age. Just 25 years old, he has racked up almost 1,000 hits in his MLB career. That puts him in some pretty elite company, historically. He has shown the ability to hit for average and power in the past. Now with the Yankees, he could put it all together and become a valuable "Plan B" for us in 2017 if Trea Turner stumbles out of the gate.

11/29/15: Salem traded Austin Bergner to Akron for Jose Ramirez.

The problem with selecting the #1-ranked high school player two years before he is eligible for the draft is that, more often than not, by the time the draft is held, that player is no longer considered to be among the top prospects. Bergner is one of those guys. We took a gamble on him at the last farm draft, and were on the fence about keeping him on the roster, as his stock seems to have fallen. Ramirez is expensive ($2 million), and he doesn't really have an MLB position in 2016, but we like him enough to keep him.

12/1/15: Salem traded Ed Lucas to Niagara for Adrian Beltre and Blake Rutherford.

We began this winter with hardly any cash for the free agent market, but after several trades we found ourselves with more cash than we could possibly spend. With that in mind, we decided to take Beltre in a salary dump, getting Rutherford as compensation. We wanted to take Rutherford at the midseason farm draft, but Niagara GM Mike Ranney swooped in and grabbed him just before our turn. The kid is a terrific hitter, and could be among the first five picks in next June's MLB draft.

12/2/15: Salem traded Alex Gordon and Adrian Beltre to Kansas for Michael Cuddyer, Pablo Sandoval, Conor Gillaspie, and Dominic Smith.

After we acquired Beltre, we figured we were done for the winter. Then Kansas GM Chris Luhning called with an offer we couldn't refuse. We shed about $10 million in salary with this deal, and added a prospect who reminds us of Freddie Freeman.

12/7/15: Salem traded Josh Harrison to Buckingham for Jorge Mateo.

Despite the fact that we already had four shortstop prospects on our roster (not counting Ramirez), we couldn't pass on the opportunity to add Mateo to our farm club. Prospects with an "80" rating in any category are very rare, and Mateo not only has 80 speed, but a decent bat as well. He could be the best shortstop prospect on our roster, which is saying a lot.

12/14/15: Kansas City traded Arismendy Alcantara to Salem for Jason Rogers.

Just when we thought we were done (again), KC GM Scot Zook pulled us back in. If we had realized how little Zook thought of Hutchison (who he said he was considering releasing!), we would have asked for Alcantara as a throw-in on our original offer. In the end, we ended up getting Alcantara anyway.

Like almost every other player we acquired this winter, we see Alcantara as a "buy low" candidate, coming off a poor performance in 2015. In past seasons, he has demonstrated the ability to hit for power and play multiple positions. At age 24, it's simply too early to give up on him.

At this point, it appears that we are (finally) done trading, and our roster is set heading into Cutdown Day. We have over $18 million in cash, and only six roster spots to fill, putting us in terrific position to find solid value in the free agent auction and draft. We won't contend for a playoffs position in 2016, but we will field a decent enough team to avoid a significant penalty. Following our last rebuilding year, we reeled off back-to-back 100-win seasons. That is our goal for 2017 and 2018.