Notes

First off, we'll begin with last night's trade that sent pitching prospect Touki Toussaint and Bronson Arroyo to the Braves for Phil Gosselin. This is one of the worst deals I've seen. The DBacks basically trade Touki, who I believe has the potential to be a #1 starter in the big leagues, to get rid of Bronson's 9M salary that comes off the book this year. One might argue that the DBacks aren't high on Touki and don't think he's anymore than a throw in, but if they're not high on him why the hell would they have drafted him with their first pick in the draft in 2014. Makes no sense. To be fair, Touki is very raw right now, has brutal control, is an extreme high risk prospect, and has a long way to go, it just doesn't make sense to trade somebody with his upside for a utility guy, which is Gosselin's upside best case scenario. The DBacks do have solid pitching depth with Collmenter, Bradley, Blair, Shipley, Ray, and Lopez, but still. If they did feel the apparent need to trade Touki, they could have got much more than a utility guy. If Touki can improve his command, and that is a big if, he'd fit the ace profile. So I really don't see the reasoning behind this trade at all for the DBacks. Props to John Hart, he's made nothing but fantastic deals ever since he was hired as Braves GM. On the Braves side of this, it's an absolute steal. Even though bronson probably has negative value at the moment, they got a guy with #1 upside for nothing really, and they can just let Arroyo walk after this year. As Keith Law put it, the DBacks whom signed a 1 billion dollar TV deal in February sold argubaly their #3 prospect for a couple of million bucks. I mean I love LaRussa, being a Cardinal fan and all, but he doesn't seem to know how to run a ball club. I didn't like the Hellickson, Miley, or Montero trades, and I'm still skeptical on Yasmany Tomas. We'll see how this plays out.