What do you get the team that seemingly has everything for baseball's Christmas, the trading deadline? A couple of high-quality vets.
We'll start with the bigger one:
Using WAR as a measurement first base has been our weak position this year with rookies
Frank Duron and
John Lopez combining for 0.7 WAR to date. They haven't been terrible - they've totaled 18 HR and 60 RBI while hitting .278 and .280 respectively, but neither have drawn tons of walks with their OBPs only about 50 points higher. So we went out and got Garza, who's done this over his career:
With 65 contact, 70 power and a 70 eye Garza is the prototypical mashing first baseman. He's a free agent at year's end and cost us a very good prospect in Valdez, who has 65 contact and 55 power potential and has overachieved as a 5th-round pick in 2035. We have a LOT of OF prospects though, so as we go all-in to try and win a World Series he was tradeable for us. Garza will of course take over at 1B and although he's done quite respectably Duron will go down to Durham to make room since we can't carry three first basemen.
The other deal:
We went out and got the wily veteran Barnett to round out our rotation. Also a free agent who didn't cost us much as Garza (Parmer is a 5th OF if things go right for him), the 38-year-old has had quite the career, earning 52.6 WAR to date including 2 so far this year as he was 8-5, 3.52 in 20 starts covering 120 IP for San Diego and boasts 55/70/70 ratings. While I quite like the Morales/Cerrillo/Espinoza part of the rotation I was less sold on Blake as the 4th starter given his mediocre stuff and I'm not sure how much to count on
Leo Gutierrez, who just went on a rehab with Durham. He'll take Baca's place in the rotation and
Omar Sears, who just came up, will head back to the Bulls while Baca moves to the pen.
To make room on the 40-man for these two I had to make a couple of tough DFA calls - C
Javy Denton has been up before and would make a good backup C for many MLB teams, and 1B
Danny Bellamy (a waiver claim of ours himself from Minnesota last year) can hit at the MLB level but he's expendable as I just went on about how many 1B we have.