Quote Originally Posted by Gryph View Post
Nah I feel you. But what some people don't remember was that Cubs team had no place for Gleyber to actually play [at the time] Addison Russel just came out belting out 20+ bombs at SS, Zobrist was all over the place, Javy locked down 2b, which was both of Gleybers prime positions. Cubs were in "we need to win. Now's the chance" and overpaid for Chapman. But Chapman also at the time was making 11.3 million [also half paid by Yankees because of how trading mid contract works] So in reality it was more like getting one of the best relievers in baseball for 5 million in exchange for a super prospect who was roadblocked at the time.

Flipping that to the Dodgers side though, Betts is in arbitration that was set at 27 mil. Dodgers have to pay ALL of that. Plus whatever they are taking on from the Price trade [I don't think those numbers were released yet] I just think it's a dumb trade by the Dodgers and wasn't needed. I'll lay it out like this :

Dodgers Gave up -
5 Years of Control of Alex Verdugo and Kenta Maeda [After losing Ryu and Rich Hill to FA]
Add Mookie Betts and David Price [For upwards of ... AT LEAST 50 million]
A complete question mark if Mookie resigns there [And even if he did that's 300 million + Minimum]

And if they didn't do that trade
Keep 5 years of plus value from Verdugo
Use that 50 million to bring in 2 stop gaps [Taijuan Walker and Ervin Santana for example]
Roll with a rotation of : Kershaw, Buehler, Walker, Santana, Urias/May/Whoever and save money and set themselves up to keep a window open.

The NL west is weak, it's been the Dodgers division to lose for a while now. Rockies didn't do crap, Neither did the Giants or DBacks. So there's no changing of parity in that division. Brewers got exposed consistently in the playoffs [unless Yelich decides to play with all sliders on rookie mode again], Cubs underperform, Cards overperform and fall flat [also lost Ozuna] like, the only team they'd need to worry about would probably be the Braves and MAYBE the Phillies.
did you forget about the nationals?