[Biggp07]

Proving the adage that one man's trash is another man's treasure, the Royals announced today the acquisition of 25-year-old minor league 2B Kaden Polcovich, 25-year-old minor league C Myles Emmerson, and 29-year-old 2B Sam Haggerty from the Seattle Mariners in exchange for 33-year-old RHP Nick Anderson and 28-year-old minor league C Logan Porter. Seattle will retain 100% of Haggerty's remaining contract.



"This isn't the deal of the century," acknowledged the Royals, "but we think it will improve the direction of both teams."

So far this season, Haggerty has 3 home runs and a .252 batting average. My AGM, J.J. Picollo, was against making this trade, but I had the final say, and it was better than the alternative in my mind.



Sam provides us with good utility play in Triple-A, and we can taxi him occasionally to provide some relief for tired players. He will provide the Omaha club's roster positional depth to play games throughout the season.



Myles fills a catcher need we have had at our High-A minor league team. It’s necessary to play 2 players in each position, and since the beginning of the season, we’ve only had 18-year-old C Ramon Ramirez playing there. So, Myles will provide some veteran tutelage and position relief to our young Ramirez at the Midwest League A+ Quad City River Bandits.



25-year-old SS/UTL Kaden Polcovich provides us the same kind of positional depth as Haggerty at our Texas League AA Northwest Arkansas Naturals ballclub. I promoted 3B David Schneider, who was our preseason trade pick up with the Toronto Blue Jays back in March.

This trade and recent minor league signings now provide more depth and team control within the high-A ball clubs, something I did not have starting out the season. We only gave up a reliever who struggled through 10 RA and 11.1 IP, pitching a miserable 6.35 ERA and 5.12 FIP, and a quickly fading Triple-A hang-around in C Logan Porter. He had excellent plate discipline and made decent contact with the ball, which gave him trade value to Seattle, I guess. We just couldn’t have him take up valuable roster space in Triple-A for the younger guys we have developing at the lower clubs.



But most importantly for me and the future of this franchise is that we shed a bit of salary. I now need to find some trade value for RHP Luis Cessa and shed a bit more salary before I’m forced to make a less appealing decision at the end of his DFA period in 3 days.

We have a tough game ahead of us with Seattle’s second starter RHP Luis Castillo. He’s an elite power pitcher with 4 pitches that will be hard to overcome if he stays ahead in the count. But he’s also starting the series with us on a 2-game losing streak so let’s see if we can capitalize on that tonight.