I got a letter the other day from an unnamed EFL owner. I thought I’d share the correspondence, slightly edited and with commentary, since it might be useful in preparing for Saturday’s 7 am (!!) meeting:
Dear Mr. EFL Answer Man:
Can I accept the trade for cingranj since I am still paying him van slyke?
— Unnamed EFL Owner
(Comment: Over the years I have developed a keen eye for what isn’t being said in a note to the EFL Answer Man. In this case, I immediately detected high levels of stress and anxiety. The poor man couldn’t capitalize nor spell Cingrani. And he believed he was paying Cingrani something called “van slyke” — if you take the writer literally. Which of course I knew I couldn’t. So, using my vast powers of empathy, and deducing he meant he was still paying money to a certain baseball player he had released earlier this season — I won’t tell you which player to protect the author’s anonymity — I carefully composed a warm, calming, affirming response.)
Dear Unmanned:
No.
Warmly, calmingly, affirmingly yours,
Mr. EFL Answer Man
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I received a quick response.
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Dear Mr. EFL Answer Man:
Huh. Some one in our league could trade me for him but an MLB team can’t?
— Unnamed EFL Owner
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(Comment: You may have detected in Unnamed’s response a certain note of incredulousness, disrespect, or even defiance. Fortunately this is no problem for Mr. EFL Answer Man who has two teenage boys at home and thus routinely hears variations on “What?? Why?? But that’s so stupid!” even on occasions when he’s not actually being stupid.
Actually, from a Comissioner’s Office point of view, getting a spirited but well-spelled and syntactically coherent response from Unnamed was a good sign. He was already in a better place just by being listened to, calmer and composed enough to master himself while communicating.
But, of course, this poor owner still needed gentle correction. Now that he was in a better psycho-emotional state, I could give him the instruction he needed, to wit:)
Dear Unmaned:
No, they can’t trade YOU for him. They don’t own rights to you. They could trade players for him, but only until the roster deadline following your DFA. That deadline was early in June. He is beyond your control now. Your only relation with him is as someone who owes him money.
Mr. EFL Answer Man
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P.S.– Maybe it would help if I went over some of the relevant trade deadline deals and explained some of the ways they might benefit EFL owners.
Our rules recognize we don’t really have farm teams, while every MLB team has 5 or 6 or some such number. So we are missing a major resource for acquiring major league talent via trade. We partially correct for this disadvantage by pretending we have tons of unnamed minor leaguers. (Hey. They’re unnamed! They might be your relatives!) They show up as replacement players we plug in when we’re short on AB or IP. And they show up as generic minor leaguers we can offer to trade to MLB teams.
We are still working out the protocols for EFL owners to communicate directly with their MLB counterparts. In the meantime, the only way we can tell an MLB team is really willing to trade a player is when they DO trade the player. If they trade for an MLB player, we can presume they wanted that specific player, since major league players aren’t fungible. We can’t horn in on those deals unless we happen to have the specific MLB player(s) they got in the deal.
But when they trade for minor league prospects — well, since we don’t have a full set of ACTUAL minor league prospects, and since minor leaguers are pretty much fungible chattel (which we know to be true because that’s how MLB teams pay them and treat them), we assume our minor leaguers are as good as anyone else’s. So we allow ourselves to replicate actual MLB trades if one side of the deal is just fungible assets like cash or minor leaguers.
Here are July deals I have identified that offer EFL teams opportunities:
Yu Darvish Yu for Willy Calhoun, AJ Alexy, and Brandon Davis: Very straightforward: draft Darvish and you can trade him for the three prospects. The trade must be made before rosters are due Sunday evening. You can pick and choose which prospects you want to keep. The rest will melt away into your mass of minor league chattel and have no further connection to your team.
Here are the other straightforward major leaguer for minor leaguer trades that might be workable this week, if you can get your hands on the major leaguer (listed first):
Brandon Kintzler for Tyler Watson.
Tony Watson for Angel German and Oneil Cruz
David Hernandez for Luis Madero
Joaquin Benoit for Seth McGarry
Jeremy Jeffress for Taylor Scott
Joe Smith for Thomas Pannone and Samuel Taylor
Melky Cabrera for AJ Puckett and Andre Davis
AJ Ramos for Merandy Gonzalez and Ricardo Cespedes
Lucas Duda for Drew Smith
David Phelps for Brandon Miller, Brayan Hernandez, Lukas Schiraldi and Pablo Lopez
Pat Neshek for Alejandro Requena, JD Hammer, and Jose Gomez
Jason Grilli for Eduard Pinto
Jose Quintana for Bryant Flete, Matt Rose, Dylan Cease, and Eloy Jimenez
Jon (Tyler) Webb for Garrett Cooper
Tim Beckham for Tobias Myers
Howie Kendrick for McKenzie Mills
Addison Reed for Gerson Bautista, Jamie Callahan, Stephen Nogosek
Dan Jennings for Casey Gillaspie
Jaime Garcia for Dietrich Enns and Zack Littell
Anthony Recker and Jaime Garcia for Huascar Ynoa (but you can’t use Garcia for this AND Enns and Littell, sorry).
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JD Martinez f0r Dawel Lugo, Jose King, Sergio Alcantara: This is also a straightforward trade, but the problem is someone in the EFL already owns Martinez. So if you want a shot at Lugo, King, and/or Alcantara, you have to pry Martinez away from his current owner somehow. Other trades equally encumbered by the petty claims of your EFL competitors are:
Sunny Gray for Dustin Fowler, James Kaprelian, and Jorge Mateo
Jeremy Hellickson from Hyun Soo Kim and Garrett Cleavinger
Adam Rosales for Jeferson Mejia
Anthony Swarzak for Ryan Cordell
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Tony Cingrani for Hendrik Clementina and Scott Van Slyke. There are major leaguers on both sides of this deal. Both were already available as free agents. I suppose you could draft one and trade for the other, but why? If you want Cingrani, just draft him. Same for Scott Van Slyke. But perhaps you are drawn to the darling Clementina? You can get Clementina if you draft Cingrani, and make the Reds’ end of the deal. You’d get Clementina … AND VAN SLYKE. Since Van Slyke is not a fungible minor leaguer, and since we aren’t sure the Dodgers would have made the deal without getting rid of him, you’d have to keep him under his Dodger contract: $1,325,000 per year this year and next.
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Note that you cannot draft Van Slyke, trade him and your own unnamed minor league equivalent for Cingrani, and then trade Cingrani for Van Slyke and Clementina. We learned long ago that this violates the “no player may go both ways in a trade” rule.
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Note also that if you weren’t interested in a Clementina named Hendrik, you could draft Cingrani and trade him for Van Slyke and treat Clementina like a generic minor leaguer — that is, Clementina would disappear into the mass of your undifferentiated minor leagues and have no further connection to your team.
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Alex Avila and Justin Wilson for Jeimer Candelario, Isaac Paredes and a PTBNL: This deal is complicated because there are TWO major leaguers on one side and because Candelario is already owned in the EFL — and I happen to know the owner, and he’s not interested in tossing Candelario into the deal for your benefit. But if you REALLY like Paredes and already own Avila, and can afford to draft Wilson, you can do the Tigers’ end of this deal.
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One last reminder: If you draft a player for the purposes of trading him for someone else, you can’t execute that trade until the draft is over. This prevents you from using the same money twice in one draft.
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How can a player be both Sunny and Gray?