At this week's General Manager Meetings, one of the hot topics was the possibility of a trade that would send one or more of the Chicago Cubs' bevy of solid position-player prospects to the Seattle Mariners, in exchange for one of the Mariners' very impressive collection of young starting pitchers under medium- to long-term team control. It was news on the order of dog bites rawhide thrown to them in the yard, rather even than dog bites man, because this is the most obvious potential trade fit in the league right now. The Cubs and Mariners are each trying to get back over the hump and into the playoffs, and each team has some very good things going for them. Each also faces some significant constraints, and the match of their respective surpluses and shortfalls does not require a baseball brain surgeon to spot. Fans have discussed the possibility of the two teams getting together on a major deal for a year or more, and nothing that has happened during that time has made the realization of that possibility any less likely.
That doesn't mean it'll actually happen, though. When two teams find themselves in such an open-field confrontation, they tend to circle each other and look for exit strategies, so they don't end up feeling forced into something. Jerry Dipoto loves a trade, but Jed Hoyer is a very conservative deal-maker. The two think about the game pretty differently, but would have to find a place where the way they each value some of their key players intersects or overlaps. That's not as easy as it is to simply identify two teams as natural trade partners.
Nonetheless, let's play this out a little bit. To really understand how realistic (and how desirable) a swap of a young Cubs hitter or two for a Mariners hurler is, we should get to know all parties involved a bit better. Specifically, we should arrive at a ranking—a pref list, to borrow the industry argot—of the five Seattle starters as Cubs targets, and maybe of the five or six Cubs prospects most likely to be involved in a deal, too.
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