“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.”

“The Toronto Blue Jays acquired Josh Donaldson from the Oakland Athletics for Brett Lawrie, Sean Nolin, Kendall Graveman and Franklin Barreto Friday, leaving the baseball world a bit baffled. The most common thesis I saw from the pundits, as I scrolled through my Twitter feed late that night, was ‘I don’t get it.'”