Once a Major League Baseball season reaches Memorial Day, “it’s still early” no longer works as an excuse.
While we hypothetically could have included Juan Soto, we can’t say we’d be thinking about trading him if we were Washington Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo.
We’re also not going to suggest teams sell low on certain trade chips.
But as they’re once again in the American League East cellar at 19-27, the Orioles aren’t exactly making the most of Mancini’s walk year.
The 29-year-old’s name obviously doesn’t carry as much weight as it did back when he was the AL Rookie of the Year in 2016 and an All-Star in 2017.
Fulmer’s metrics, however, suggest he deserves better than the results he has.
Cashing in Fulmer as a rental reliever probably isn’t what the Tigers envisioned back when he first broke in as Justin Verlander’s co-ace.
Similar to the Tigers, the Chicago Cubs came into 2022 on a high after loading up on talent during the winter.
To be fair, the Cubs did have a positive run differential before taking a 20-5 loss to the Cincinnati Reds on Thursday.
Perhaps the Cubs have been more competitive than their record suggests, but they’ve done so while playing one of the easiest schedules of any National League team.
Meanwhile, Contreras is having the best offensive season of any catcher by a sizable margin.
Even in what was otherwise an unremarkable 2021 season, Ian Happ still set new career highs with 148 games played and 25 home runs.
It’s hard to let players like this go in a vacuum, but doubly so when they’re still more than a year from free agency.
For all the promising spurts he’s had throughout his six seasons with the Cubs, consistency has had a way of eluding him.
Castillo has been effective in all four of his starts, allowing no more than three earned runs in any of them.
It’ll likely take a more prolonged hot stretch for the Reds to have any hope of cashing Castillo in for a package similar to what a year-and-a-half of Jose Berrios got the Minnesota Twins last summer.
At 19-29, the Oakland Athletics are indeed having a better season than the Reds even after they similarly took a hatchet to what was a pretty good roster.
The A’s rarely do extensions in the first place, so that discussion is barely worth having even without considering what one for Montas would cost.
