Go Fish

My Grandfather was a Navy man and an avid fisherman. He used to say something along the lines of " If you want to catch a small fish, you will spend all day chasing your bait. You wanna eat? Then go after the big fish."

The Miami Marlins are sitting right there dangling big fish... why not bait the big hook and reel something significant in?

Clearly Derek Jeter needs to clear cap space and he is all but asking other teams to make him a strong offer within reason. Well I have something for the former Yankee Captain... how about 100 Million good reasons. With every tick of the clock the Marlins toil under the pressure of not yielding to their debts. Oddly enough, if for nothing else, there is one thing the Oakland Athletics have (which they almost never have) ...room to bump the budget. If not for the next two or three seasons, at least until deeper pockets come a calling (and they always do, perhaps as quickly as by the trade deadline), the A's could make a trade almost solely based upon debt relief and later earn their keep trading players off one by one.

Would the Marlins like to trade Christian Yelich and J.T. Realmuto for top prospects and MLB ready talent? Of course. But the fact of the matter is, their ownership group just over-paid for a below value organization in a region which typically does not support baseball. To gain the cap relief they need, the Marlins would be wise to move on from their high rent players, select one or two top prospects, take on a handful of select single season rentals, asses their minor league system top to bottom, and come up with a long term plan.

Here is the Proposal:

Oakland A's offer... Franklin Barreto SS/2B, Reynato Nunez 3B/OF, Raul Alcantara SP, Jesse Hahn SP, Bruce Maxwell C, Jed Lowrie 2B/IF, Matt Joyce OF

Hahn is an ARB1

Lowrie & Joyce are owed $6M each ('17)

[Rough total minus minimum contracts for 2017= $12M]

for... Dan Straily SP, Wei-Yin Chen SP, JT Realmuto C, Starlin Castro 2B, Christian Yelich OF

Straily and Realmuto are both ARB1 cases

Chen is owed $10M ('17), $20M ('18), $22M ('19)

Castro is owed $10M ('17), $11M ('18)

Yelich is owed $7M ('17), $9M ('18), $12M ('19), $14M ('20)

[Combined total minus ARB figures= $106M]

Let us not stand on ceremony for Franklin Barreto, the Oakland Athletics have traded away every single first round draft pick since (I dunno~ what) Jose Canseco??? Addison Russell, Michael Choice, Grant Green, etc... will all back me up on this and I would be more than happy to finally wash my hands from the whole Josh Donaldson trade fiasco getting (something/anything) like a Christian Yelich back in return. Maybe the ugliest part of this offer from the Athletics side is that they are just giving up players out of options or tossing away a player like Bruce Maxwell. Truth be told, those guys all need a change of scenery and Maxwell needs a new audience. Taking on Wei-Yin Chen from the A's stand point will be the worst part. He is as big a risk as the club has faced since the signing of Billy Butler. Coming off of a UCL injury and owed over $50M, the 32 year old Taiwanese southpaw is a risk the A's can afford but the Marlins cannot.

Someone reading this is going to argue that the Marlins will NEVER make a trade like this and ya know what... you are right~ it's almost improbable that anyone in either front office thinks this far outside the box and swings a deal this crazy. Then again... who thought Giancarlo Stanton would get traded to the Yankees for Starlin freaking Castro?!!

Thoughts?