So, last year we watched the Yankees add Aroldis Chapman to their already formidable duo of Andrew Miller and Delin Betances. By the time the trade deadline came around the Yankees now that they were not going to be good enough to make the playoffs so they decided to trade Chapman to the Cubs and Miller to the Indians. Funny how those two teams were the ones to make the playoffs.
Watching the Cubs bullpen dominate with Chapman, Rondon, Edwards jr and Strop. The Royals did it the year before with a dominating bullpen of Holland, Davis, Herrara.
So what do we learn from this? Amassing a dominate handful of relievers can basically make it so a starter can give everything he has for 5 innings. We are right now witnessing a change from the era where pitching dominated the game now players seem to be able to hit 30 home runs just by getting out of bed. Every team has hitting but if you have a shutdown pen you have an edge over your opponent. At the very least you have some very desirable trade chips that can land you some top prospects. Seems like a great way to rebuild an aging team without the long wait.
That being said I wonder if a team can pull off signing a chapman or Janssen and then sign a guy like Drew Storen and a couple more guys with live arms.
The winter meeting begins Monday and with the new CBA in place we should see ALOT of transactions!