“Surely the Royals would not be upset in recreating the roster that was responsible for them winning the pennant. If I were the GM, I would not have spent $30 million on Billy Butler. On the other hand, I can potentially make a trade with the Boston Red Sox, for, who we will call for now, Billy Butler Light.”

“I don’t have an overarching deep-dive in me tonight. A bunch of small moves with very low potential impact happened on Tuesday, driven by the deadline at which teams had to decide whether they would tender contracts to their pre-arbitration and arbitration-eligible players or release them into free agency. Nothing big happened. It would be a disservice for me to write two or three thousand words for you about anything that happened. I’ll just run through the three moves that stood out, offering up the analysis I think each move deserves.”

“Monday was an interesting day in Major League Baseball, with a handful of very small moves and one big one that stood apart. Beyond the actual moves, though, there was an unusual abundance of interesting speculation, tidbits and non-transactions. A couple of those stood out to me, as well, so I’ll quickly run through my thoughts on them here.”