It is a very odd place to be when your team is winning 70% of its games and you don't own a single player on your roster (aside from the players you are currently using to win 70% of your games) who has any trade value whatsoever in the eyes of your peers.
Like, none. Zero. Zilch.
We are only using 26 of our 35 players on the active roster, which means we have nine who are being stored on our roster for the sole purpose of future usefulness. They aren't useful at all this season, but many of them are having decent-enough 2022 MLB seasons to warrant a spot on our roster. Of those nine, all nine have been deemed completely useless by the other teams in our league.
We also have a whopping 15 farm players. Of those, we'd like to hold on to just four of them. That leaves eleven others. But again, all eleven -- eleven-for-eleven! -- have been deemed completely useless wastes of roster space by our colleagues in the BDBL.
In total, then, we have no fewer than TWENTY players on our 50-man roster -- 40-percent! -- who we should release tomorrow, because they are apparently without any value whatsoever. The best team in the BDBL, at the moment, has a roster where two-thirds of its members are completely worthless.
Amazing.
Earlier this year, we offered two recent first-round picks -- Asa Lacy (#4 overall in 2020) and Sal Frelick (#15 in 2021) -- to South Loop's wonderfully-friendly and personable GM, Bart Chinn, in exchange for Bryan Reynolds. Chinn was so insulted by this offer, you'd think I took a shit on his carpet. He was still fuming over that offer weeks later, in fact, and publicly scolded me for making such an insulting offer.
This past chapter, we offered a number of players who were selected in the first round of the past two MLB drafts, as well as a number of young players with MLB experience and decent (so far) MLB '22 numbers, to two different teams. All we're looking for are niche role players: a right-handed hitter who can hit lefties, and a relief pitcher who can fill in some middle innings. Typically, these two types of role players are the least-expensive types of players to acquire.
Not this year.
The market for part-time right-handed platoon hitters and shitty middle relievers has never been hotter than it is right now. In order to fetch those players, I was asked by my most recent trade partner to consider dealing Brandon Crawford.
Folks...setting aside Shohei Ohtani's crazy Ruthian-like ability to both pitch and hit, Brandon Crawford would currently be not only our team MVP, but the Ozzie League MVP. He leads the league in batting average and slugging, and ranks #3 in the OL with a .397 OBP. Are you seriously fucking telling me that I'd need to trade the MVP of the Ozzie League to acquire...
...checking my notes...
...a platoon hitter and a middle reliever??
Fucking seriously??
Somewhat unrelated sidenote: Brandon Crawford is having an abysmal 2022 MLB season -- which is something I feared when I signed him to an extension. He was a late-career flash-in-the-pan, as I expected he would be. Why on earth would any team that is not competing this season want Brandon Crawford? Seriously.
I've scoured every roster in the BDBL. The remaining options for filling those very small and specific roles are slim and none -- especially given our WAR trade cap limit. In fact, in that last deal I offered, adding the two players I requested would have put me at 10.9 WAR for the season. You can't get any more perfect than that! It was so perfect, it seemed like fate!
But no.
So, instead, I've decided it's best to simply stick with the team we have. We've won 70% of our games with the roster we have, so why mess with it? Why sacrifice any part of our future -- even if no one else in the league sees any value in any of those twenty players?
What a thoroughly-ridiculous trading season it has been.
