The Universe is bent, all right…

… but I am beginning to wonder whether it’s bent toward justice like they say it is.

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Consider these facts:

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1.  MLB had what I believe is a record number of July trades — at least 39 of them!
2.   Those trades involved over 100 players,  by my count.
3.  Each of us should have had on average 3 players involved in trades. True, more than half of those would be faceless minor leaguers, but that still means 1.5  of our 30 rostered players should have been traded.
4. The EFL had 16 players traded so far — about our share as a league.
5. But this boon was not equitably shared! Here are the number of players each team had traded in July:
   1.  4 players:  Portland
   2.  2 players: Brookland, Cottage, Pittsburgh, Flint Hill, Haviland.
   3.  1 player:  Kaline, Peshastin
   4.  0 players:  Old Detroit, Canberra, D.C.
6. Trades went so profligately in MLB that two of our teams  (Portland and Pittsburgh) had one of their players traded for another one of their players.
7.  Some teams had the opportunity to save huge amounts of money by accepting trade offers for players making millions of dollars:
   1.  Brookland:  Manny Machado — $17,750,000
   2.  Portland:  Chris Archer — $13,000,000
   3.  Haviland:  Ian Kinsler — $8,500,000
   4. Pittsburgh:  Lance Lynn — $7,750,000
   5. Brookland:  Francisco Mejia — $7,500,000
   6.  Cottage:  Mike Moustakas —  $4,750,000
   7.  Portland: Jonathan Villar — $4,500,000
   8.  Kaline: Leonys Martin — $4,500,000
   9.  Portland:  Austin Meadows — $3,500,000
   10.   Flint Hill: Brad Hand — $3,000,000
   11.  Portland:  Kevin Gausman —  $2,000,000
   12.   Flint Hill:  Jonathan Schoop — $2,000,000
8. Even though Canberra had no players traded, it stands to save $3,000,000 by being released from having to subsidize Villar’s salary.
9. It’s true that Portland can’t rid itself of both Archer AND Austin’s salaries. But still, that leaves  a total potential savings of  over $78,000,000.  Split 11 ways, that’s over $7,000,000 per EFL team.
10. Plus  access to scores of prospects.

But the W’s got none of that. The W’s, who only have a pittance to spend in the draft and need cash badly.  The W’s, who can’t move a solid pitcher like Doug Fister practically for free to try to scrape up an extra million or so in cash.

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I know — the W’s are in first place, so I should quit whining. But if Portland takes the Archer trade, it will have 20 times as much money to spend as Old Detroit does.  The ‘Buds are only 0.9 games out.  I’d need to be ten times farther ahead before I’d feel like I had a fighting chance against all that moolah.

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Let’s see:  Portland has 20 x my current cash.  My lead needs to be 10 x it’s current size.  20 x 10 = 200.   Doesn’t this mean I have 0.5% of the resources I need to win this year?  Feels about right.

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Well, at least I’m glad my recent attempts to sell Lewis Brinson failed.  (And yes, they have failed.  All of Old Detroit’s outstanding offers are hereby revoked, including those not involving Brinson. I am still willing to move Fister for close to free.) Had they succeeded as planned, Portland would still have many times as much cash as Old Detroit, and I’d be down a future all-star outfielder  for the next four years.

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I’ll treasure that small grace — that  my inept trading skills accidentally protected me from wasting Brinson.  I know the Universe is laughing at me, but I snuck this one thing by it!