The San Francisco Velocity pitch us a fascinating trade offer to open up the Winter Meetings today.
They propose to send us their star third baseman, 26-year old Jesse Cibula, in exchange for merely 5 of our prospects, including our best relief pitching prospect and our best position player prospect.
And of course we will decline. But what is fascinating about this is that a mere 3 years ago this would have been a very tempting offer indeed. Cibula looked like he was developing into a sure Hall-of-Famer when he won the MVP award at the age of 23, having broken into the WPK at the tender age of 18 (and putting up a 5.3 WAR in his age 18 season.) Sadly, the Cortez, Colorado native has seen his stock fall the past few years and while he remains an above average player with great power, his 4.3 and 4.0 WAR campaigns in 1972 and 1973 respectively are the two lowest of his career.
He is still young- he turns 27 eight days from now- but things certainly don't seem to be trending in the right direction for Cibula and his defense at this point is sub-par.
It is certainly possible that he could help push the Brewers to the top in 1974 and we are in the financial position to take on his contract at this time (which expires at the end of the 1975 season) but it doesn't fit the organizational philosophy to compromise long-term potential for possible, but by no means guaranteed, short-term gain.
Still, if this was the 1970 version of Jesse Cibula, well, it might be a different story.