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We just need to determine what to do with it all. I mean, there's no need to trade for Alex Gordon if Stefen Romero is about to post Carlos Lee's career, as someone else suggested recently.
Just move Romero to LF and call it good.
The first question is: who do we have? Franklin, Zunino, Romero and Miller are all mighty fine blue-chippers at glove positions, but can they carry the offense? Ackley, Saunders, Seager and Smoak should be a hub to work around, except they haven't all hit like we need them to. Ackley is supposed to be Robin Ventura, not Scrubby McAverage. Smoak is supposed to be a Teixeira-class ship, not Rubber-Ducky class.
If Zunino comes up and pulls a Posey, then we can obviously make this offense work. If Montero turns into Sweeney, that'll be a big help. We have a flood of young hitters in both the bigs and the upper minors that COULD make an impact. More than Seager and Saunders need to (and we need those guys to keep it up as well).
We also have a ton of great arms, but arms are unreliable. Walker could go down like Pineda tomorrow, and what happens then? Imagine if we hadn't traded Pineda - he would have zero trade value for 3 years (the lost year, the recovery year, and at least half his "proof" year after that). Which pitchers do you trust to stay healthy? Which ones to be TOR talents?
Just selecting whom to trade is gonna be complicated. Most of us are on board with Paxton and Franklin having the most value of those we would trade... but I also like them as two of our best bets going forward. That's probably not a coincidence.
I want to keep Paxton for us. I also want a vet bat or two, and I don't want to lose our #1 draftpick in 2013 for signing that vet bat unless he's Hamilton-levels of awesome.
Something's gotta give. So I hope we can trade for a Tulo or a Gordon or a Wright (with extension), and see if we can't get the offensive contributor we need to help jumpstart the rest of the young lineup.
And yet selfishly I hope we can keep Paxton in the process. ;-)
It's a really big year for this team. I would not be surprised to see an extension for Felix, but if I were him I'd want to see what kind of team we deliver to him for the '13 season before he inks his name to that line. I want Felix's Mariners to compete for WS titles going forward, not basement standings. We've acquired a LOT of young guys. Time to move some of em for the RIGHT player(s) to enable us to take that next leap.
If only we could be sure which of our top dozen talents should remain, and which are free to go...
~G