I hope not that would be moronic, you are just wasting his prime years as a catcher. You know then he wouldn't come up until May at age 25 at that point, so his first full season would be 26.
I do think they should look to trade him at the deadline or next offseason if he has a bounceback year as he will be a free agent after 2022 and I don't think the O's will aim to be competitive until 2023. There is no way that they could get reasonable value at this point and the PR hit would be huge. Also it is better for him to get back to baseball here where he is comfortable and not have the added pressure of adjusting to a new team.
If we're punting 2022, getting Trey to a better team is a kindness.
I certainly picture him here working off the rust this year, and hopefully with health being back to some kind of plus for a better 2022 team.
Kjerstad has some catching up to do, but it isn't inconceivable sometime NEXT summer RMC/Hays/Kjerstad/Santander/Diaz can all outplay him for that 5/9ths of the lineup.
Like Cruz/Ozuna, you kind of imagine his market value floats some depending how NL DH turns out.
Good Trey could get himself some numbers inheriting that Donaldson/Ozuna seat behind Acuna/Albies/Freeman, but then there's the whole getting non-tendered thing.
I think this and Santander is more teams trying to squeeze the Rosario, Pederson and DuValls of the world.
I’m skeptical anything comes of this. The O’s are unlikely to just give him away yet the Braves are unlikely to give anything of value for a player coming off cancer. Probably just Braves seeing how desperate we are to cut costs.