The bleeding has only just been stemmed - that was a tough beat.
Our initial target among this year's FAs fell by the wayside (see the Preseason post in a bit for more) and we had to wait until after the Draft to try and acquire our other chief want, so it was a slow start to the offseason other than signing quality RP Alejandro Pena on a 5/4500 deal. He'll step into the vacant Closer role.
As soon as the Draft was done with, we approached the Mets and ended up making the following trade:
That's right kids, the Killer B band is back together. Actually, with Buechele and Bell we've got a veritable hive going.
The Burks addition meant Cangelosi was totally blocked and the Mets were keen to take him off our hands so it was a fairly straightforward swap.
That left us with one ineligible too many now that Ellis is on board and we always knew which one was the odd man out. It took some figuring but eventually we rolled the dice and brought another IRL club fave into the fold via this transaction:
This was one of those
trades you can do deals. We were planning on using LaValliere to back Sluggo up this season then trade him but this was the only way we could get the thing done and we decided we had another only slightly less preferred option in Brian Harper so we pulled the trigger. It gets Sandy off the books, bringing us back within the allowed CC membership, and improves our balance sheet mightily to boot. Where it could come unstuck is if Slaught gets hurt but we'll just make sure the trainers treat him like a Fabergé egg until further notice.
OK so that leaves us with one unused transaction voucher to deploy as needed over the course of the season.