In some ways, this post feels like a repeat. When rumors first surfaced that the Royals were considering shipping off Wil Myers to acquire a veteran starting pitcher, I wrote up my feelings on why that wasn’t such a great idea. If you want to see my full breakdown on swapping Myers for Shields, start there. The brief summary goes something like this; sure, the Royals need better pitching, but they also need better outfielders, and better infielders, and better everything. The Royals were not a particularly good baseball team last year, or the year before, or really any time in recent history.

They won 83 games back in 2003, the last time they had a winning season. Prior to that, you had to go back to 1993 to find a season where they won more games than they lost. Two winning seasons in 20 years can make a franchise desperate for respectability. And desperate teams often do desperate things. But I don’t think anyone saw the Royals doing something this desperate.

If you haven’t heard the news yet, the Royals agreed to trade OF Wil Myers, RHP Jake Odorizzi, LHP Mike Montgomery, and 3B Patrick Leonard to Tampa Bay for RHP James Shields, RHP Wade Davis, and a PTBNL or cash. Whenever there’s “or cash” attached, you can be pretty sure the PTBNL is no one of note, so basically, the Royals traded their best prospect, their best pitching prospect, and two other talented youngsters for Shields and Davis.

The obvious comparison here is the Erik Bedard trade. Coming off an 88 win season, the Mariners decided to go for broke, shipping off prospects Adam Jones, Chris Tillman, Tony Butler, and Kam Mickolio along with reliever George Sherrill to acquire Bedard from the Orioles. The Mariners weren’t as close to winning as they thought they were, and after they won 61 games in 2008, the entire front office was fired and the organization went into a full scale rebuild. Bedard spent his two years in Seattle on and off the disabled list, while Jones has blossomed into one of the game’s best center fielders and Tillman continues to flash some potential as a young starter with a big league future.

That trade is generally regarded as the worst prospects-for-veteran swap in recent history. This might be worse.

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The Phillies have a hole at third base, and Michael Young is a man without a position in Texas. These two problems look to be coalescing into a trade between the Rangers and Phillies, where Texas would ship Young to Philadelphia in order to give him the chance to have a regular gig again, and they’d receive a little bit of salary relief in the process. The Rangers would still be on the hook for $10 million of the $16 million he’s due in 2013, a natural response to the fact that Young was Major League Baseball’s worst regular player in 2012, but they’d free up a roster spot, save a bit of money, and give one of the franchise’s most popular players a chance to keep his career going in a new city. From that perspective, the deal makes a world of sense for Texas.

But, despite Young’s dismal 2012 season, I like this deal for the Phillies as well. As I noted on ESPN Insider yesterday, there’s a decent list of recent performers who have apparently fallen apart in their mid-30s, only to rebound the next season and regain most of their pre-faceplant production. While Young was genuinely terrible last year, we also need to keep in mind that single year performance isn’t the best indicator of future performance, and any decent projection should be informed by his success prior to 2012 as well as his failure last year.

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Bad news for Michael Bourn – the Phillies just emphatically closed the door on bringing back the free agent center fielder, giving up Vance Worley and top prospect Trevor May to acquire Revere from the Twins. Given the price that we just saw Denard Span go for last week, this is a bit of a shocking price for Revere, and looks like a significant overpay for the Phillies.

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The Indians have made it pretty clear that they are shopping Asdrubal Cabrera. With at least a serviceable fill-in on the roster in Mike Aviles and Cabrera’s trade value likely at its peak this winter, they’re attempting to use their 27-year-old shortstop to acquire more young pieces with an emphasis on future value. Arizona has been most often linked to Cabrera, as their never ending search for a shortstop makes them something of a logical fit. Reports this morning suggest that Cabrera could be the bait that gets them Trevor Bauer or could be part of a larger, multi-team trade that results in Justin Upton finally being traded.

Clearly, the cost for Cabrera is quite high, and before Arizona surrenders one of their best trade chips, they should be aware of what they’re getting – a decent-but-not-great hitter who might not really be a shortstop much longer.

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In a vacuum, you could probably make a decent enough case in favor of exchanging Alex White for Wilton Lopez. As Jeff wrote last week, Lopez is the game’s most extreme high GB/low BB reliever, and this skillset allows him to be an effective late-inning reliever. Lopez is a quality arm, and he can be a key piece of a good bullpen. Meanwhile, White has been pretty lousy during his first 150 innings in the big leagues, and there’s a decent chance that he ends up in the bullpen himself. As one person noted to me on Twitter last night, the Rockies traded a guy I’ve projected as a reliever in the past for a better reliever.

There’s just a few problems here. The primary one regards the health of Lopez’s right arm. The reported deal with the Phillies that never materialized last week apparently included Philadelphia having some significant concern over his elbow, and a couple of folks here in Nashville have said that Lopez flunked a physical at the trade deadline that nuked a trade for him back in July. When there’s smoke, there’s often fire, and the fact that Lopez spent a month of the 2012 season on the DL with an elbow issue suggests that there’s almost certainly something there worth worrying about. Without access to the medical information and people who can intelligently interpret it, we can’t say to what degree Lopez is damaged goods, but it is clear that other teams have serious concerns about how long Lopez’s elbow is going to last before he needs surgery.

However, predicting injuries isn’t something anyone has mastered, so let’s just assume for now that Lopez is going to stay healthy. Even with that assumption, it’s not clear that this is a significant upgrade for Colorado relative to simply shifting White to the bullpen.

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The perils of rumor reaction writing – Baggarly has amended his original note to suggest that the Giants offer is two years with a vesting option, not three years. So, adjust accordingly.

There are times when a player undergoes a dramatic transformation and essentially forces us to abandon everything we knew about that player previously. Cliff Lee. Jose Bautista. R.A. Dickey. It happens. Guys reinvent themselves, and as a result, their new contracts reflect the recent reality, not the average of all their Major League seasons.

And sometimes, guys have monster rebound seasons, reminding everyone of their previous levels of success, and enable teams to have confidence to pay premium prices to get them under contract. Adrian Beltre, for instance. Giving a veteran player a huge raise is not always an overpay. Sometimes, he’s just done enough to change the market’s opinion of his skills, and his performance requires a drastic change in compensation.

So, I’m not willing to say that every big raise for a veteran is a de facto overpay. But, even with all that said, I can’t say I understand what Marco Scutaro did in 2012 that has made the market drastically reevaluate his value.

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The Royals hunt for a quality young starting pitcher is the worst kept secret in baseball. At various times over the last few weeks, the team has been rumored to be considering trading Wil Myers, Alex Gordon, Eric Hosmer, and Billy Butler in an effort to obtain a hiågh quality arm, preferably one with multiple years of team control and a bright future. Over the last few days, the rumors have shifted from primarily being about Myers to focusing more on Butler, with both the Mariners and Royals identified as potential fits based on their needs for offense and a potential ability to part with young pitching.

Personally, I don’t see much of a fit with Seattle, a team that already has a young right-handed DH in Jesus Montero. The Mariners also don’t really have the kind of Major League ready young arms that Kansas City is looking for in exchange, so while the theory might work, the teams don’t really line up in terms of exchangeable assets.

The Orioles are another story. After non-tendering Mark Reynolds, their best DH options on the roster are currently Wilson Betemit and Steve Pearce – not exactly the kind of firepower that a team with playoff aspirations is looking for. In terms of need at DH and desire to add an impact bat, there probably isn’t a better fit for Butler than Baltimore.

The question is more along the lines of what would go back to Kansas City in return. The Orioles have a significant amount of talented young pitchers, but they don’t have the kind of established Major League performer that the Royals seem to favor. Their best young arms — Dylan Bundy and Kevin Gausman — are still considered prospects, and their Major League young arms all come with significant question marks. However, given Butler’s actual trade value, perhaps that kind of unestablished big league arm is actually a worthy return.

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Not exactly the biggest news of the winter meeting, but the Rangers agreed to sign Joakim Soria to a two year contract today, and Danny Knobler suggested that it would be in the $8-$9 million range, and Alden Gonzalez adds that Texas got a team option for a third year in the deal as well. This is a bit of an unorthodox move, as Soria had Tommy John surgery in April, and is unlikely to be ready for the start of the 2013 season. In general, guys coming off surgery have to settle for one year deals, then get bigger contracts once they’ve proven they’re healthy. Ryan Madson, for instance, just signed a one year deal with the Angels, and his timeframe is pretty similar to Soria’s.

However, just because it’s unusual doesn’t make it a bad idea. Often times, these one year deals turn out to be good value buys for the signing team, as the injury issues serve to drive the player’s leverage — and consequently, his price — significantly below what similar healthy players are signing for. Under the previous free agent compensation system, a team could extract one year of value from a good reliever, then collect draft pick compensation after they walked in free agency the next year. Now, though, the qualifying offer drastically reduces the chances of compensation for a relief pitcher, which drives down the team’s incentives to churn the bullpen each winter.

So, I wouldn’t be overly surprised if two year, low AAV deals become a bit more common, as teams try to get a low cost healthy season as the benefit to paying for the cost of rehab. Even if Soria only throws 20-30 innings in 2013, having him potentially available for the postseason and then having him locked in for $4 or $5 million in 2014 could make this a pretty nice bet for Texas, and the overall guarantee is low enough that it won’t be a killer even if Soria never does return to previous form.

And, of course, with a 38-year-old Joe Nathan lined up to closer in 2013, injury or performance issues are always possible, and this gives the Rangers a secondary option for the second half of the season if Nathan needs to be replaced. Given the high cost of closers at the trade deadline, making this kind of deal now to prevent yourself from having to pay those exorbitant rates later could end up saving the team value in the long run, especially if Soria returns to form and can provide value as the team’s closer in 2014 and 2015.