Behind the scenes of BYB's own trade deadline

The 2014 MLB trade deadline got more attention than Mila Kunis at a frat party. But most fans might not know that here at BYB, we had our own trade deadline on July 31st. Every year, we try to improve the staff so we can make a solid postseason run, but this year, since Al, Kurt, and Rob were busy trying to cover the Price trade, it fell to Fielder'sChoice and HookSlide to pull off the major signings on the BYB side of the house.

These are the private emails that surfaced shortly after the expiration of the deadline.

HS: Who do we have out there that we can get, and who are our trade pieces in house? I'm hoping we have what it takes to lock up a big-time name, like Rosenthal or Heyman.

FC: Well, Phil Coke's Brain has been on the DL forever, so at this point I'd be willing to shop him around. We've also still got a ton of leftover ink ribbons from way back when Patrick traded Tokarz. Our top prospect is Danny Vargovick, but I wouldn't want to trade him unless we got some serious value in return. Like Jeff Sullivan or Bill Watterson or something.

The News might be willing to deal Henning. Newspapers are dead and they know it. I'd love to see if we could get Chris Iott, he should come at a discount because he'll probably bring a bunch commenters with him.

HS: Henning would be a blockbuster trade for us, but I have concerns. He's a veteran and could really help bring some wisdom to our staff, but he's bound to start declining after this year. I mean, he used the word "mellifluously" in a recent tweet. It's only going to get worse from there. What about getting Wojo? Obviously a rental, but it would be nice to have someone to use as a pinch-tweeter when the Tigers have a no-hitter going on. He can talk about it and draw all the "jinx hate" away from the rest of us.

FC: Well, with the Tigers current pitching rotation we would certainly get our money's worth out of Wojo. I think he's worth looking into.

Just got off the phone with Rosenthal's people, apparently he sprained his thumb this morning in the flurry of trade rumor texts he's getting. CBS said they'd want Rob plus Dombrowski's personal phone number to give up Heyman. I told them that was highly unlikely. Sullivan actually has a restraining order against me (long story) so you should probably handle that one.

HS: Alright, we'll keep Wojo on the back-burner in case everything else falls through. Are you sure your information on Rosenthal is correct? I was just texting with him and he said he was already in talks with Kurt this morning and was ready to sign. I just don't know what the asking price would be. Has anyone tried to give you any hugs lately?

FC: Maybe one of us is talking about the wrong Rosenthal. There are about 50 of them skulking around right now. It's like someone decided to do a zombie spin-off of The Wizard of Oz. Trust me, I don't have nearly enough value to get Rosenthal. I offered myself to MLive for Iott, but they said they wanted a moderator and the rights to all Donner photos. I asked why they wanted a moderator; they obviously weren't going to use them. Then they hung up on me. Do you think we could get anything for Kurt?

HS: Kurt is basically an immovable piece. He's got ties with Detroit News, so it's much harder to move him without things getting messy. Plus he's got pictures of me doing body shots off a Shetland pony that is not, technically, my wife.

Rosenthal is still texting me and asking when we can pull the trigger. I need to just pick up the phone and call him, so let me take care of that.

[.......]

Unbelievable. That wasn't even the real Rosenthal. It was a Little Caesar's phone number. I can't believe I fell for that.

Let me grab a sandwich and I'll get back to you on the MLive thing.

[.......]

HS: BREAKING NEWS! Bowden just totally screwed the pooch by plagiarizing/re-tweeting a fake Twitter account! Now he's gone AWOL, MIA, POW, and possible LMFAO. Get him on the phone, quick! We may be able to capitalize on this!

FC: HookSlide, you ignorant slut! Bowden didn't have much value before this snafu. If we needed someone to constantly make up baseless trade ideas would could just bring in that poster that wanted to trade Porcello for Braun. At least he uses his own ideas, I think.

HS: Ok, let's drop the Bowden idea for now, and maybe we'll take a flyer on him later. Actually, I already took a flyer on him a few minutes ago. Like, an actual flyer. Looks like maybe it's an older pamphlet from the early 2000's or something.

We have bigger fish to fry. Rob was live-tweeting the game today, and he just dropped out in the middle of the game. Why would he leave the BYB Twitter account in the middle of a game? I'm a little worried that we might have accidentally traded Rob.

Get back to me soon, the deadline ends in, like, 30 minutes. We need to figure out something fast.

FC: I texted Rob, Kurt, Patrick and Al. Kurt just texted back, "david price dombrowski price AUSTIN NO WHY fan reaction fan reaction PAGE VIEWS." I'm pretty sure that means they're all just busy. That makes sense.

We pretty much ruled out every one except Wojo. Did we find out what they'd want for him yet?

HS: The Detroit News is insisting we take Tony Paul along with Wojo, for some weird reason, something about his "questionable involvement" with "The Huge Show." But are you ready for this? They want you. They also want us to throw in San Diego Mick because of his incredible ability to produce mass amounts of content. I tried to tell them that he's not even officially BYB staff, but they keep insisting on it. How the holy Magglio do we trade someone who doesn't even work for us yet?

More importantly, are you ready to make the move to the Detroit News?

FC: Me and SDM for Tony Paul and Wojo? I just want to do what's best for the team, and I'll be honest, that sounds like a good deal for BYB. I guess I'll do what I need to do. I'm not sure how we can include Mick. What's a sign-and-trade? I know I've heard that term before. Whatever we do, we better do it quick. We're almost at the deadline.

HS: I know. Kurt's gonna be ticked if we don't make any deals. I say we just spin the whole thing and tell everyone we felt like our organization was strong enough as-is, and needed no improvements. Only a few minutes left.

FC: Dang, I knew I shouldn't have ordered that extra Chalupa at lunch. The deadline came and went while I was in the bathroom. I never even got a chance to see if we could get Mick on board in time. I was starting to like the idea of working for the News too, just like Kurt.

Oh well, I guess I'll just go down to the basement and crank up the voltage on Rob's Super Secret Motivation Machine and feed him an extra caffeine pill. That should get us three or four articles a day until the playoffs roll around.

By the way, what kind of sandwich did you make?