I think we'll revisit this thread in a few years and realize Toboni made the right moves at the 2026 deadline.
I tend to think the trades need to be thought of in the context of a GM trying to to inject depth into a farm system that was basically completely fallow by the time Rizzo got punted out. Seems like largely everything of any value was generally speaking acquired via trades the past 5 years or so, and most of the internal prospects were misses, and it definitely seems like at least part of what this GM doing is basically trying to acquire as many prospect bullets of lingering interest as possible to backfill what was a largely empty, barren farm before he arrived. It's not pretty, getting a bunch of guys that are just Major's level bodies, rather than talent, and getting prospects that are more 25th-40th, than 1st to 10th, but one definitely gets the sense that what we've got is a GM trying to stock a floor of the farm system that is completely empty, w/some sort of talent.
If you take a step back and look, not as a fan of the everyday, but as a fan over years and decades as most of you guys are, then it seems pretty explanatory......
The team tore it down '21-'22 after the title, tried to rebuild w/a brain dead lack of analytics, did produce some talent via trades, but the farm system was so laggard that the product they could put together from the rebuilt which should have theoretically been fully online by '25-'27, clearly was a disaster class because the in house prospects failed to fill in the rest of the non-FA roster.......
What do you do when this becomes obvious by '24-'25? Well eventually they ---- canned the GM, and replaced them with more forward thinking figures at GM and beyond.....their job, seems to me, from what I can tell anyway, is to try and build a competent team while fixing the long dead farm system and infusing it with/talent and/or bodies.....seems like they added back to back good or better classes in '25 and '26 in the draft, and they've traded a bunch of assets along the way the past year to start filling in the gaping holes in terms of depth the farm system has and had.
How do you fix the problems they've inherited from a series of mostly awful drafting for a decade, and selling off what quality they did have in win now trades through 2019.....?
I could be wrong, anyway, but I think that's what they're doing, trying to build back up to functioning what was once dead and go from there......it's a bullets instead of Patriot missiles kind of approach......and it could easily prove unwise, if they miss on pretty much everyone, but it's understandable why they're doing this. A farm system this bereft the past decade, needs depth and talent to function at all, and at this point, they're doing the depth part. Anyway, that's the sense I get of this. I don't know how I feel about the haul, looks pretty uninspiring, otoh, I think I kind of understand what he's doing and don't entirely disagree w/it, and it's not hugely surprising that neither of these guys returned top of the line prospects. Neither are elite trade pieces....
