Picture credit score: © Nathan Ray Seebeck-USA TODAY Sports activities
The Seattle Mariners commerce 2B José Caballero to the Tampa Bay Rays for LF Luke Raley.
The Tampa Bay Rays commerce RHP Andrew Kittredge to the St. Louis Cardinals for OF Richie Palacios.
On the floor all of it seems like a large number. Beneath is a kind of photos of the ocean currents that was necessary in each middle-school historical past e-book, highlighting the course of the winds that carried ships forwards and backwards. The Seattle Mariners had, on the stability sheet, six beginning pitchers and one beginning outfielder. The Tampa Bay Rays had N+1 relievers, the place N is the quantity they should scrape collectively at any given second, and a relative paucity of shortstops. The Cardinals discovered themselves with N-3 relievers, identical fixed. So as a substitute of getting to fret about contract figures and theoretical price range restraints, we get to work with some good old style surplus economics.
We’ll begin with the Cardinals. They bought the rights to Palacios in the course of 2023 as outfield assist, given the accidents and inconsistency of their beginning trio. He wasn’t fairly organizational depth by that time, however his limitations as a hitter have been pretty clear—not sufficient energy for a nook, not sufficient vary for middle—and a .217/.351/.318 line in his third tour at Columbus bolstered the notion. St. Louis wound up making use of that depth, as Palacios ended up supplanting Tyler O’Neill by September. After which a humorous factor occurred: He hit six residence runs in 102 plate appearances for the Cardinals, probably the most he’d ever notched for anybody staff in a season at any stage.
