Should we really trade Gregg?

[Nny]

A lot of people, myself include, have talked about trading gregg to conserve money to spend else where.

the thing is, next season ('09) is his last season under club control. Then he is a free agent.

If he is what he's been, he'll be a Type A FA.

Meaning we'll would get two draft picks for him.

In other words, the questions become

1) Can we get equal/better of two draft picks in a trade

2) If we can't, do you eat the, like, 4-5m he'll make next year just for the draft picks, or do we need that money to spend elsewhere (obviously, something that won't be seen until other moves are made)

3) Do you also take all the risks that comes with banking on him become a type A (i.e., if he becomes injured, if he just doesn't pitch aswell, expecially if he loses the closers role)

4) Do we even offer him arbitration after next season? I don't know if this management has ever offered a reliever arbitration when that player is FA-able

5) will our bullpen even be good enough w/o him? I think we should be fine, but I mean, we realy overestimated our bullpen for this season. And losing gregg next year would hurt it even more. And if we're still competiting, we need a bullpen. Keeping gregg for that extra year could help groom tucker and dlc for '10 to shore up that bullpen.

moreso just thinking aloud, because this is so far in the future it even worth that much of a discussion now. but I figured I'd post, see peoples thoughts.

[Count Bass D]

Depends on how much money Loria wants to spend next year. If he still wants to be low payroll, we have to let him go. If he expands some more, then we should probably keep him.

[Hugg]

I think there are other players we could trade that would save us the money, get us better return, and that we're more suited to replace with in-house options.

[Swift]

I don't think now is the time for the Marlins to reverse philosophy and go "long term" in a closer who's not elite.

Ideally, this team has enough invested into it such that you just trim the fat (Willingham/Jacobs) and make a tough call (Uggla) other than that, we shouldn't have to look at most of these players as luxuries, but we are where we are and we're beginning to make those 90's clippers teams nearly lavish by comparison.

[Ralph]

Really depends. If a team comes up with a good enough offer you trade him if not take the picks after the 2009 season. Then again it really depends on how much salary they want to cut/raise.

[Swift]

Let me clarify my earlier post:

If it comes down to us being ridiculously cheap yet again and we're talking about a $5-6 million arbitration award for Gregg, I'd rather have, in no particular order:

Uggla, Cantu, Jacobs, Hermida, Johnson, Olsen, Nolasco and Ross over Gregg.

And all those aforementioned guys, with the probable exception of Johnson, will be looking at anywhere from $3 million to $6 million each.

[Nny]

I'd certainly hope gregg is far down the list but I still expect us to be in the ~40m range until otherwise proven wrong, and keeping him there is very doable.

although something I didn't think about is the fact that, when trading gregg, we have the bargaining power of saying "hey, this guy is a type A FA, so give us what we want and you'll get the two draft picks at the end of the year"