For the love of baby Jesus. Nobody is advocating trading every player at their peak. Where do you come up with this nonsense. It's about timing and there are numerous factors when deciding to trade a player. You praise the team for being in a position to win going forward. Well, why in the hell do you think that is?
If you think that trading Lindor or Kluber a year earlier wouldn't have reaped more/better benefits then you're just not paying attention. One thing is for damn sure, we wouldn't have had to include Carrasco to get a deal done, and if his salary would still have needed removed from payroll then the package for him would have been significant too.
We do need some more prospects while at the same time needing fewer prospects. It depends on what kind of prospects you're talking about. You can't look at a farm system with blinders on.
Where do I get the idea that many posters are advocating trading away our best players way too early? Try reading thru the thread about trading JRam now, or at the deadline. Notice references to trading Bieber and even Plesac in that thread.
Its totally ridiculous.
Many are saying that we should have traded Kluber and Lindor earlier, because we would have gotten more for them.
Doh!
Of course we probably would have gotten more. Kluber would have had three years of control left and Lindor two. After this season Biebs will have three years of control left and JRam two. Those wishing that we had traded Kluber and Lindor earlier, using the same logic, must be insisting that we trade Biebs and JRam no later than next winter.
And, in hindsight, EVERYBODY must have known that Kluber was gonna have his arm shattered and that Covid was gonna hit America.
At the time so many wished (now) that we had traded Kluber, he was coming off a 20 win season in which he was 3rd in CY voting. Lindor was coming off a GG season in which he was the fifth best SS in baseball by fWAR, and the best over the last three seasons.
It seems like many fans never want to compete. They never ever want to put the best team possible on the field. They'd rather amass prospects...and shrug off the fact that we are gonna lose a ton of good looking youngsters next winter, if we don't trade a bunch of them very soon. For an org that depends almost exclusively on the acquisition of young players by any means imaginable, the 40 man situation is a huge problem, but many fans want to make it worse.
A lot of folks want to channel their inner Branch Rickey, but Rickey...maybe the greatest GM in history...did not operate without a reserve clause. Back then, contracts didn't matter, service time concerns didn't exist, the 40 man didn't exist, and there was no automatic free agency. For Rickey, the clock never ran.
This org needs to squeeze the most BASEBALL value (production) out if its players. Trade value is the secondary consideration, because production wins games, which trade value does not.
If our FO is correct in its evaluations...and their track record is excellent...this team is a contender right now, and is set up to continue to contend. This doesn't mean that it WILL contend this year, because track records are not always linear. Nobody bats 1.000.
But a wise investor always bets with the long term track record. If Warren Buffett was a baseball buff, and applied his theories to making long term baseball evaluations, at or near the top of the list would be the Cleveland Indians.
Find market inequities. Find an org with a well defined strategy for targeting those inequities by evaluating and acquiring talent successfully for a long time, and has been able to develop that talent into production....and then bet on that franchise.
The bottom line theory behind calls to trade our best players early in their careers is that this team is never very good, and therefore never a real contender...so why even try to contend when we could perpetually turn over talent so that other teams can contend?
Its a perpetual motion strategy for mediocrity.
I like Warren Buffett and our FO a lot better.