The Longest Fantasy Baseball Story Ever Told - Part Three

We started at the draft, and then left off with my team sitting at .500 and needing something drastic to happen to get this team on the right track.

That something happened on June 4. My two months of attempting to trade Ryan Braun finally paid off, but instead of looking to reload my roster, I decided it was time to rebuild and focus on the upcoming basketball season while throwing in the towel on baseball. I would not only lose Braun but also a pitcher that dominated in the first two months of the season.

I traded away Ryan Braun, Masahiro Tanaka, my 8th and 11th round basketball picks for Josh Willingham, Jorge De La Rosa, a 2nd and 3rd round basketball pick and the right to swap first round picks in an upcoming basketball draft. 

It was tough to lose Tanaka, but this baseball team just didn't have what it took to contend. Just two days later, I would complete the selling process with another trade that hurt just as much as the first one.

I traded Evan Longoria, Zack Greinke, Koji Uehara, my 9th and 12th round basketball picks for Daisuke Matsuzaka, Joe Smith, Juan Francisco, a first round basketball pick and a conditional basketball pick depending on how many home runs Longoria had the rest of the year. It was guaranteed to be at least an 8th, would move up to a 6th if he hit ten more homers, and up to a 5th if he hit 20 more homers (it became a 6th). 

These moves decimated my team for all intents and purposes, but right around this time, I made two pickups that seemed to be minor but would change the course of my season.

In free agency, I picked up Ben Revere and Marcus Stroman. 

Stroman had recently gotten blown up as a reliever, but he was getting a shot in the starting rotation. As an undersized person, I love undersized pitchers, so Stroman was a guy I had coveted for a while. Ben Revere was an empty batting average and stolen bases, but if he could do those two things well enough, he could definitely add value, and it wasn't like I didn't have the space to give some new guys a try. Those are moves that worked, but a few days later, I also added Andrew Heaney and Dylan Bundy with speculation that they would be called up soon. Heaney was called up soon, but did not deliver results and Bundy was completely worthless. But hey, you can't win 'em all.

Not shockingly, my team lost immediately after trading away five of my best players. Although, I was selling for this year, I'm always looking for value for next year, so I did the logical thing and made another trade.

I traded Jorge De La Rosa, and a 9th round football pick for Gregory Polanco, a 15th round football pick, and the right to swap 7th round football picks.

Polanco had been drafted in the 25th round, which means he would only cost me a 23rd to keep in 2015. This was worth a later half football pick to me, as all of my trades had left me with nobody to keep but Jose Abreu.

Partially led by Gregory Polanco, I won my next matchup against the worst team to get back up over .500. It was short lived, as I lost my next matchup by falling one run and one RBI short to go back to .500. Still, it was an important week, as I made this move.

I picked up Jake Arrieta in free agency. 

With Revere, Stroman, Polanco, and Arrieta, there were winds of change on the horizon.

But this is only part three, you'll have to wait for part four to get to that story.