Cowhide Joyride receive:

Buster Posey, Derek Holland, 5th round pick, and a 10th round pick

Montezuma’s Revenge receives:

Carlos Beltran, Josh Beckett, 15th round pick, and 16th round pick

Dave turned two of his best picks from the 2011 draft (and two of the best picks in the entire draft) into some nice value. With Posey, he has someone he can either keep and have excellent keepers at the shallowest positions (Weeks and 2B, Zimmerman at 3B, Andrus at SS, and Posey at C), or he can trade for a good draft pick or two. What might make the most sense is packaging the newly acquired RHoward with Posey and seeing what those two keepers could bring in. He also gets two nice picks and has lots of nice parts left to deal off for more picks. He may have lost the opportunity to get very high picks (first or second round) with his recent deals to sell the major guys, but he’ll dominate the middle rounds.

For myself, the market for Posey was getting pretty thin among the teams who were giving up for the year. Either they didn’t have the parts I needed or had too many keepers already (or, in Troy’s case, just didn’t like Busta). I would’ve been fine keeping him and trading in the offseason, but wanted to address the need for another good hitter and pitcher and got them both. I hate giving up draft picks, but gotta go for it when you have a shot. Grabbing the 17th and 42nd ranked players so far was definitely a good move I think and gives me a rotation that is not especially top heavy, but is deep and consistent. Beltran will essentially replace Dunn as a regular, which is obviously positive. And given my track record with early picks, I may be better off drafting in the late rounds anyway.

All in all, again, a trade that works for all involved.