But if there's one place this team is young and talented at the moment, it's the OF. Cruz' DH tenure is difficult to project in the extreme, so bringing in someone to lock down a COF spot going forward does make sense.
And *depending* on Gamel and Haniger to be 3+ WAR contributors on the corners is a big ask of ~first year rooks. Using them as the core of a 4-to-make-3 approach seems like the ideal leverage of their combined talent, youth, and unpredictability. Still, if both of those guys *do* lock down COF spots for the next half-decade, we're going to be better off dumping as much of our 'excess' talent into the rotation (or *possibly* 2B/SS since it's seemingly inevitable that Cano moves off at SOME point). The 'pen is plenty talented for a pennant run, the offense is good-and-probably-great, and the defense is plus across the board.
A legit 1B masher, a #2/#3 SP(s) go with Paxton, or potentially a killer OF are pretty much all you could add to this club at this point.
And yeah, the Smyly deal stings but them's the nature of rolling the dice on UPside rather than predictability. Smyly was long on potential gains, but the hippo lurking beneath the surface is always the injury bug on starters without established track records of durabilty and success. That durability issue is why Leake looks like a good pickup to me, even though he's not exactly inspiring.