Miguel Cabrera could be traded?

[Kenny Hates Prospects]

Frankly, yeah. Unless we have a ton of young guys coming up to take over 6-7 positions, giving AGon $20 million means that we'll have bargain basement guys filling other positions. And he wouldn't be the only one around then getting expensive: Quentin, Danks, $10 million already for Rios, Floyd, Beckham would be hitting arbitration. You could do it if you had a lot of young guys coming up...but you'd have just traded away all your young guys for Gonzalez! So basically, you're going for everything in the next 2 years, and you're expecing that you're going to have to blow it up once AGon hits FA unless you nail a draft or two

You could be right, but let's say we give up Flowers, Hudson, D2, and Viciedo, basically gutting the top-end of the system. What if 2 years from now Flowers is a .240/.320/.420 hitter in the Majors, Hudson is a #3 in SD and puts up good numbers, D2 is about a .270/.330/.390 hitter who is running out of chances and has already been passed by a couple guys in the Padres' depth chart, and Viciedo is lumbering around in LF, although coming off a break-out year where he put up numbers like Carlos Lee in 2000 (.301/.345/.484). IMO that would be a pretty damn optimistic viewpoint for the Padres considering what can happen in deals like these (like the Johan Santana deal for instance).

 

Now let's also say that with Adrian here we win two straight divisions and make two straight trips to the ALCS, and maybe even taste another W-S. Let's say we don't even win another W-S either. We just get very close on two straight occasions, and for two straight seasons we end up filling the ballpark from May through September, and even in April 2011, and we happen to attract another sponsor or two in the process, as well as get more of our games showcased on national TV. Yes, maybe some of our key cogs will be pretty expensive by the time 2012 rolls around (Danks, Floyd, Quentin, etc.) but we would also likely have more money to play with than otherwise, so instead of being forced to let Buehrle walk and trade one of our expensive young players, maybe we can let Buehrle walk and keep all of our young stars, or maybe we could let Buehrle walk and trade one of our young stars while extending Gonzalez, or let Gonzalez go for draft picks and keep all our young players plus bring back Mark, etc. The idea that if we trade for Gonzalez we won't be able to keep a young core isn't much of an idea because it basically assumes we'll be in the same spot financially going into 2012 that we are in currently going into 2010.

 

Even if we gut the top level of our farm I doubt we're going to miss more than 2 of the players we sent out. In two years time we can find another #3 SP prospect who we're at least as excited about as Hudson, if not more so. We can find another power bat to stick at a corner IF or OF spot. Mitchell could be ready to step into the OF two years from now for all we know. It's no given we'd be in a bad spot. I said this before in another thread, but look at where we were two years ago and compare it to where we are now. We were just coming off the 2007 season and there was no reason to be hopeful about much of anything. We traded our two best pitching prospects that winter for a bust in Swisher and we didn't even get burned by it, at least not yet. That Swisher deal has the potential to be far more devastating than any Gonzalez deal IMO.