The way the Rays are constructed and funded, they could care less about Shield's or Myers actual performance. They traded Shields to save money. If Myers becomes a productive major league player, it is a bonus. If Shields continues to perform well, but leaves the Royals once he is FA eligible; what do you think that will say about the Royals? It will continue to add to their stigma of not being able to keep productive players.
So the Rays don't care if they trade elite MLB players and get busts in return?
That is ridiculous.
Of course they traded Shields to save money. They are one of the lowest revenue teams in the big leagues.
But they also want to field a competitive team because if they go back to 95 loss seasons, that team is done in that market.
There is a lot that can happen before Shields leaves the Royals. They WILL have the money to sign him if they choose to with all the contracts like Santana, Francouer, Hochevar and Bruce Chen.
Yet it fits your agenda to already assume he has no chance at staying.
Actually, people are saying that the Cubs won't be forced to trade away players that have proved worthy of their prospect status and actually produced in the majors; like Shields and Garza from the Rays; Beltran, Damon, Dye & Greinke from the Royals; and Bonilla & Ramirez from the Pirates. The Cubs have proven this idea through signing extensions with Castro & Rizzo and have had open discussions regarding an extension with Samardzija.
Wrong.
Actually there are many people, even in this thread, that are saying the Cubs should trade away Garza.
As to players they can flip; we aren't talking about "core" players. We are talking about back of the rotation SP (Feldman, Baker, Maholm) and position players that have specialized skills (DeJesus, Schierholtz, Hairston) that could peak the interest of playoff contenders at the trade deadline.
Once again this thread is about Garza. Who should most definitely be a core player.
Those other players you have mentioned will bring back very little in return.
Hosmer is 23, Moustakas is 24 & Myers is 22. I wouldn't completely right them off as busts yet (Moustakas is apparently trying to pull everything as apposed to Starlin Castro's affinity of going the other way; and both of them are being exploited by their current flaws, and coincidentally is more a matter of youth rather than any significant deficiency in their game). It certainly did take Alex Gordon a while to establish himself, just like Jeff Samardzija. As to Montgomery and Lamb; they have suffered from the same thing many high profile young pitchers do, injuries.
Both Hosmer and Moustakas are entering their THIRD seasons in the majors and have shown little to no improvement.
The time is now for them to start establishing themselves as the clock is running out very, very fast.
Yes it took Gordon a bit to develop, but he is much more the exception than the rule.
One of these days you have to figure out that the exceptions are not the norm. You love to point out the exceptions and trying to use those examples as the norm.
The Royals have also had success with their youth over the past half dozen years (Salvador Perez, Lorenzo Cain, Billy Butler, Alex Gordon, Greg Holland, Aaron Crow & Luke Hochevar [as a reliever]).
Perez, Butler and Gordon are three core players for sure.
Cain has played well for like two months. Long ways to go.
Holland and Crow have been pretty good. But the Royals used the 12th pick in the first round on Crow to be a top of the rotation starter. Not a 7th inning guy.
And Hochevar?? Are you fucking kidding me?? Do you pay any attention at all to what happened prior to the last week or so??
Hochevar has been brutal. One of the worst major league starting pitchers in the history of the game.
If you think finally getting some decent production as a long reliever out of the #1 overall pick in the draft is a smart way to build your team, well we already know you are dumb anyway.
It is kinda funny, the Royals made all these trades for higher priced talent (Shields, Santana & Davis); but they did this after they had a solid young core on the field. Perhaps you should take a cue from a fellow Royals fan:
http://kingsofkauffman.com/2013/01/20/monopoly-money/
A solid young core that lost 90 and 91 games the last two years.
This is the seventh year in the majors for both Butler and Gordon and the Royals teams they have played on have never lost fewer than 87 games and that is the only season they lost fewer than 90 games.
The Royals management knew that there was not enough to the core to become a winning team on it's own.
The only thing between the Royals and another 90 loss season is James Shields and Ervin Santana, and the way they have played the last couple weeks, that might not be enough to stop another 90 loss season because players like Moose and Hosmer have been that bad.
