Despite having the best record in baseball at the moment our offense has been a constant struggle. And checking the trade block, I saw a chance to rectify an unsuccessful decision I made in the offseason. Looking for a RH power bat I made a deal to acquire Franmil Reyes from Cleveland rather than sign a certain free agent even though he wouldn't cost a ton and even though we had plenty of money. He ended up signing a $4.5M deal with Detroit and had a great first half of the season, and now with the Tigers out of it they put him on the block so we did this:
Welcome to Tampa Bay, J.D. Martinez. We acquired him for another guy we once had hope for as a key to our offense in Alec Bohm, who hit .220 with 4 HR in 277 AB for us last year and was a pedestrian 257/301/384 with 7 HR at Durham where he was admittedly unhappy. Perhaps another change of scenery will do him good as his ratings are still halfway decent but he was buried in our system. Meanwhile all Martinez has done for Detroit is hit 275/357/547 with 21 HR and 61 RBI. Of course he'll probably stop hitting once he joins our lineup as only Alex Bregman has thrived since being acquired for hitting help while recently-added "saviors" like Mitch Haniger (2-18) and Zach DeLoach (2-20) have struggled. JD will become the full-time DH and will send Curtis Mead to the bench as Andrew Vaughn will become the primary 1B. Mead has tailed off since a fine April. This will also send us into a DeLoach/Haniger platoon in LF and Heliot Ramos will go back to Durham.