We began this winter with so many issues, it seemed that rebuilding in 2024 was our only option. My first order of business was putting our best trading chit, Framber Valdez, on the Selling forum to see what the market looked like.
Mostly, it looked like crickets chirping alone in the dark.
So, I pivoted to "compete" mode. The problem with pivoting is that it required dumping a ton of salary. In order to do so, I'd have to sacrifice the future, and I wasn't willing to sacrifice the best of our prospects to make that happen. Fortunately, I found a way to make it work.
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Trade #1: Traded Ranger Suarez, Kyle Teel, and Wade Meckler to Philadelphia for Kutter Crawford.
At $10 million in salary and suspect MLB numbers (especially given the huge difference between MLB and BDBL numbers last year), Suarez was the biggest albatross hanging around my neck this winter. In order for me to have any shot of competing in 2024, I simply needed to dump that salary. Unfortunately, it came at a very steep cost. But then, doesn't it always?
Teel was a steal for us in the midseason farm draft last summer. He hit the ground running and posted phenomenal numbers in his pro debut. For better or worse, though, he was expendable due to the presence of Adley Rutschman and Ethan Salas on the Mulligans roster. With the DH, we have room for two catchers, but not three. Sacrificing Teel was an evil necessity, but an easy decision due to that traffic jam behind our plate.
Meckler was a much more difficult decision. I stand by my original assessment when we first signed him last summer: he will have a Wade Boggs-like career. Sacrificing two prospects of such high quality was difficult, but getting Crawford in exchange softens the blow a bit. The former Cowtippers prospect looked good last year, and is still young enough to have some upside.
Trade #2: Traded David Bednar and A.J. Minter to Flagstaff for Ricky Tiedemann and Jarlin Susana.
We won a championship in 2019 thanks in large part to our dominant bullpen. A dominant bullpen carried the Los Altos Undertakers to their fifth championship last month. Darien and Charlotte also enjoyed great success last year thanks to their bullpens. Trust me, I know how important quality bullpens are. Unfortunately, we have a much bigger issue we needed to address this winter, and sacrificing two quality bullpen arms was an absolute necessity.
That issue was simply this: we had no pitching whatsoever beyond the 2024 BDBL season. Shohei Ohtani will not pitch the entire 2024 MLB season and may never pitch again. We lost Jon Gray to free agency, and Framber Valdez is a free agent at the end of this season. We also lost Luis Garcia to an injury that will rob him of his entire 2024 MLB season as well. The only starter remaining on the Mulligans roster was JP Sears, and he remains an enigma.
Starting pitching is incredibly expensive. It is also incredibly difficult to predict which of today's mediocre pitchers will become tomorrow's aces. Two years ago, no one could have predicted that Spencer Strider, Kevin Gausman, Zac Gallen, Justin Steele, Zach Eflin, and Pablo Lopez would all be top-ten pitchers. Yet, here we are.
Needless to say, we need to add as many quality arms as possible to our roster, ASAP, and just pray that one or two of them becomes the next Spencer Strider. Tiedemann is as good a bet as any. He missed most of last year with an injury, but was considered a top-ten prospect previously and had a strong showing in the AFL. He could be that future ace we're looking for. The huge and hard-throwing Susana is icing on the cake.
Trade #3: Traded Mark Canha and Ryan Noda to Lake Norman for Marcus Stroman, Daniel Bard, and Josh Royas.
I had Canha penciled in as the everyday center fielder in 2024, and Noda as our platoon against lefties. I wasn't thrilled with either one, though, and Canha's $6.5 million salary was a tough pill to swallow. Trading for the $10 million Stroman meant we were adding a decent 130-IP starting pitcher for a difference in salary of "only" $3.5 million. Add the two penalties from Bard and Rojas and that made him a $4.7 million pitcher.
I took a look at the 2024 free agent market very early on and determined that I wanted no part of it -- at least in terms of filling a starting pitcher slot. There are only a handful of free agent starters available who have 150+ innings, and nearly every one of them will get a Type H salary due to the low supply and high demand. Adding a pitcher of Stroman's quality for under $5 million was a no-brainer.
***
At this point in the game, I had managed to cut $10.2 million in salary. That gave me enough cap space to fill the gaping holes in our roster: one quality reliever, half of a quality starter, a 1B against lefties, a full-time second baseman, and an outfielder against righties.
I could have sat tight at that point. In fact, I thought I was done trading for the winter. However, I was still worried about our starting rotation in 2025 and beyond. Other than Tiedemann, and possibly Sears and Crawford, we had nothing. I did not want to be stuck filling those gaping holes through expensive and aging free agents. I began looking for a way to swap Valdez and/or Stroman for young arms we could use down the road. That's when the Highland Freedom came calling.
***
Trade #4: Traded Framber Valdez, Daniel Bard, and Josh Rojas to Highland for MacKenzie Gore and Casey Mize.
Like Tiedemann, Gore and Mize were considered to be among the top pitching prospects in the game not that long ago. They have come nowhere near fulfilling that potential, but that doesn't mean a thing in the prospect game. They both have the stuff to succeed. They just need to put it all together.
Obviously, losing Valdez leaves an enormous hole in our starting rotation. However, we now have enough money to fill that hole through free agency if we want to do so. At least now it is an option. Unlike Valdez, whoever we sign will be with us for two more years after this one, which solves our 2025+ problem.
Trade #5: Traded Luis Garcia to Flagstaff for Aidan Miller.
I was on the fence about keeping Garcia. He is owed $1.1 million this year, but won't pitch hardly at all. Next year, we'd have to pay him $2.1 million not to pitch. Which means he would only pitch a full season (maybe) in 2026, at a salary of $3.1 million. Granted, he could be an absolute bargain at that point. However, I regretted giving up Miller in the first place, and I'm happy to have him back. It saves us an additional $1.1 million, and it allows us to now trade one of our three third base prospects. Which brings us to...
Trade #6: Traded Marcus Stroman and Brayden Taylor to Virginia for Jesse Chavez.
Although I only paid $4.5 million for Stroman, I realized that freeing his salary was worth more to this franchise than the 130 innings he would pitch for us in 2024. With that, I tried to market him based on his 2024 BDBL value, which should be significant, especially in this shallow pitcher's market. I received no bites, even when I offered to take back unwanted salary to soften the blow of his $10 million salary. So, I switched tactics. Instead of selling Stroman's 2024 BDBL value, I sold Brayden Taylor's future value as a prospect. The addition of Miller made Taylor expendable.
Tony Badger took the offer and added Chavez to our bullpen as well. It's a win-win for both teams. I really like Taylor, and believe he can have many .300/.400/.500 MLB seasons ahead of him. But with Brock Wilken and Miller on our farm, and several shortstops who could likely move to third base, he was a luxury we didn't need. (Of course, I remember saying the same exact thing about Alex Bregman at one point.)
Trade #7: Traded Travis Sykora to Jacksonville for Michael Lorenzen.
After trading Valdez and Stroman, we were about 300 innings shy of having enough innings from starting pitchers to get through this season. Lorenzen brings that number down to 150, which is what we feel will be attainable in this auction/draft.
***
I started out this winter with no direction and no money. Now, I have both. Our direction is very simple. We are looking to compete in 2024. If that fails to happen in the first few chapters, we will bail and look to 2025. I began this winter with a budget of around $5 million for 15 players. I now have over $26 million to spend. That puts the Florida Mulligans in play for arguably the best auction pool we've seen in a decade or more.
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