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... now that Paxton and Walker are presumed to be big-league rotation parts, let's say.  Maybe he's #2 behind Jackson, but little AJ is currently 6 levels away from the bigs, and DJ is in AA, starred in the Futures Game, and should be ready by Spring 2016 if we wanna take it slow.
You don't spend your best trade chip and top-50 minor league prospect on a pretty decent player. It devalues the rest of your system. ;-)
Our system/young player list breaks down like this:
- Two top-50-style pitching prospects (Walker and Paxton) who have basically graduated
- Two top-50-style hitting prospects (Jackson and Deej) who are very much in the system
- a MOR starter (Elias) in the middle of a ML rookie learning curve, and another in AA (Sanchez)
- a couple of top-100-style middle infielders (Franklin and Taylor) sitting in AAA, plus a .300-hitting baby in AA (Marte)
- a few low-minors arms with tons of upside (Diaz, Gohara and Missaki, among others)
- SEVERAL raw outfielders with plus hitting talent (Morgan, Wilson, O'Neill, Guerrero, Kivlehan, Henry)
- two suspended hitters with large upside (Choi and Blash) but decreased trade value
- talented pitchers with injury issues (Hultzen, Landazuri, etc) and bullpenners galore.
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If we say Nick Franklin would slot in around our #6-ish prospect based on that list, and DJ would be #3.... you don't trade two of your top 6 prospects for a couple years of .750 OPS... do you?
I mean on this team it would be great - but that can't be market value.
We don't trade DJ and Franklin for him, I can't imagine.  Problem is, they might trade Kivlehan and Franklin and have Tampa Bay come out ahead on that deal.  We have a lot of decent prospects and no real world beaters (taking Paxton and Walker out of the equation).  I don't want to roll several of my very good prospects into one pretty good player.
I want Zobrist... but I want to have the arsenal to throw at a top-shelf talent, too. Overpaying in prospect-currency for Zobrist doesn't help us do that. We should be able to add him with lesser players.