The opening proposal for a blockbuster
As you can see in the previous slide, the Giants aren’t going to give up any of their prized trade chips for peanuts. With that in mind, I went toward the top of the Twins prospect list on MLB Pipeline and asked myself what would be attractive in a package to acquire both Bumgarner and Smith. That way, it would at least tell me what the Giants would be interested in and I could work down from there if the price got too rich.
I also want to shy away from dealing Royce Lewis or Alex Kirilloff as future franchise pillars and even though Brusdar Graterol has a shoulder injury, I feel his upside is too much to just give up on at age 20.
Here, the Giants get Rooker, who has been on a tear at Triple-A Rochester with a .286 average to go with 14 HR and 47 RBI, but also will have a tough time cracking the outfield with Max Kepler, Byron Buxton and Eddie Rosario entrenched in Minnesota and C.J. Cron being another roadblock at first base.
Balazovic, who recently made a nice impression at the MLB Futures All-Star Game, seems like a nice second option to me as the fifth-best prospect in the organization. Nick Gordon and Stephen Gonsalves aren’t sexy pieces for the Giants, but they’re still ranked high enough that the Twins could part ways with them and not feel so bad about it.
When Reuter gets the offer, he mentions that he likes the package of Rooker and Balazovic as a starting point, but doesn’t believe that Gordon and Gonsalves is a valid third piece to make packaging the two trade chips worth it. He also believes that to maximize their value, it would make more sense to deal each separately, but for the sake of this article, we’re going to try to pull off the blockbuster anyway as he makes a counter offer.