Greinke is taking his talents to Milwaukee

The Kansas City Royals have finally shipped their disgruntled ace out of town, and he's heading to the Milwaukee Brewers. Going the other way are four propsects, two of which have MLB experience. Considering the Jays were rumoured to be interested in acquiring Greinke I figured it would be worthwhile to give some stats on the four players heading to Kansas City so we can all do what you know we are going to do and compare them to any Jays propsects that could have been used to acquire Greinke.

Lorenzo Cain was considered one of the Brewers top 10 propects heading into the 2010 season. Thecentre fielder hit .317/.402/.432 across two minor league levels before getting the call up to the majors. In only 148 plate appearances he hit a very respectable .306/.348/.415. He's considered mainly a gap hitter with not a tonne of power, but exceptional speed. He stole 33 bases in 37 attempts between the minors and majors.

Alcides Escobar is a shortstop who was considered the Brewers top prospect before the 2010 season. He spent the entire year in the majors and accumulated a very unimpressive .235/.288/.326 slash line. He is, however, considered a defensive master and a large portion of his vlaue lies in his glove.

Jeremy Jeffress was ranked as the 3rd best pitching prospect in the Brewers system last year. He missed significant amounts of time between the 2009 and 2010 seasons for repeatedly testing positive for marijuana. It doesn't seem to be affecting his pitching, though, as his fastball consistently touches 100 mph.

Lastly, Jake Odorizzi. He was ranked as the Brewers top pitching prospect last year, was also considered the best high school pitcher in the 2008 draft and is likely the prospect with the highest ceiling in this trade. He's only 20 years old and pitched to a 3.43 ERA in Class A last year.

I think it's pretty safe to say that the rumoured package centred around Drabek and Snider would have gotten the deal done with the Royals. From strictly looking at the numbers (as I've never actually seen any of these guys play) I would take Snider or Drabek over all four of them, and Anthopolous did very well to not be willing to part with those guys. 

Apparently the Royals were looking for both quantity over quality and were also looking to fill holes in their system at shortstop and centre field. I've never agreed with GMs making trades strictly to fill "holes" in their farm system instead of trading for the highest talent. That talent can always be flipped at a later time to acquire the position player you require.

From the Jays perspective, they managed to snag Brett Lawrie fom the Brewers before the Royals were able to get their hands on him. There's really no doubt that he would have been included in the Greinke trade were he still available, and from a talent level is on par or above any of the players KC acquired in the trade. If you want to look back even further, you can compare this trade to the Roy Halladay trade last year. Which propects would you rather have on the Jays? I'd take Drabek, D'Arnaud and Gose any day for one year of Roy Halladay over what the Royals were able to obtain for two years of Greinke. Well done again, sir Alex.