[mikev]

Salary Dumps!

Part of a rebuild is acquiring future assets, no matter how little chance of succeeding they have. This was the idea behind our most recent deal, which looks like this:

LA sends
LF Jaime Jiménez (GUBA)
C Luke St. John (AAA)
2023 4th round pick (from Toronto - 23rd in round)
2023 5th round pick (LA - 6th in round)
2023 5th round pick (from Bogota - 7th in round)

California sends
a tax refund check

So, for a total of less than 3 million dollars in salary relief, we walk away with this...

Jimenez, after a season of pretty awful development, is borderline useless after a couple 20+ VORP seasons awhile back. He's the primary salary dump in the deal but he still might hit a couple home runs for us.

Luke St. John is simply an insurance policy in the event that we trade Kenkichi Sugiyama, who has been on the trade block for some time as he likely won't be around next time we're competitive. He's nothing special, but can be a backup catcher and he's cheap. He was thrown into the deal and we didn't care one way or another if he was included.

The draft picks are just more assets, plain and simple. With the crazy development some players have seen, what's the chance that one of those 3 picks ends up a big leaguer? I don't know, but there are 3 more chances than we had before. Works for me, maximize your chances.