On the most superficial level, this has something of the absurd about it:

Josh Donaldson, when healthy, is one of the best third baseman in the majors. He’s talented both offensively and also defensively, which is almost all the ways a ballplayer can be talented. He’d represent an upgrade on basically any of baseball’s contending clubs.

That’s basically any of baseball’s contending clubs. Not all of them, though. A brief examination of this site’s WAR leaderboard for position players reveals why.

This table feature the top-five major-league position players by WAR currently. Two of those players have recorded the majority of their starts at third base. Alex Bregman is one of them. As noted by Jeff Sullivan recently, Houston’s Alex Bregman is an emerging superstar — is perhaps, now, even a fully emerged superstar. Josh Donaldson — and, in particular, a version of Josh Donaldson who hasn’t appeared in a major-league game since late May — likely would not represent an improvement on Bregman for the Astros.

Even closer to the top of the leaderboard, though, is Jose Ramirez. However modest his pedigree as a prospect, Ramirez has become one of the game’s greatest players. He has more trade value than anyone else in the majors, according to Kiley McDaniel. He’s possibly en route to a 10-win season, according to Jay Jaffe. He could possibly break baseball, according to Dan Szymborski. If one takes for granted that waiver-deadline trades are most frequently executed by contending clubs looking to address known weaknesses, then the notion of Cleveland acquiring a third baseman would represent one of the least possible outcomes. They already have the best one of those.

In reality, of course, this deal (if and when it happens) won’t be a case of Cleveland attempting to address a deficiency at third base. Rather, it could very well represent an attempt by the club to address one of its actual shortcomings — namely, center field — by a sort of positional ripple effect. Because of his positional flexibility, Jose Ramirez could switch to second base following the arrival of Donaldson. And because of his positional flexibility, Jason Kipnis could possibly serve as a reinforcement for what is projected as one of the worse center fields in the majors.

It’s very possible that Cleveland is acquiring Donaldson to address (indirectly!) their center-field needs. If healthy, Josh Donaldson could greatly improve Cleveland’s center-field production without ever playing an inning there. As for the cost to Cleveland, that remains unclear. As for a number of other things, they also remain unclear. For the moment, however, it seems as though Cleveland has acquired an elite bat for the middle of their lineup while simultaneously addressing one of the club’s few weaknesses.