It would be almost unreal if we could get Stripling for Cervelli.
Please don't get me wrong in my posts - I'm simply saying that it's extremely early in the offseason and I'd caution against reacting too strongly to anything, especially something like moving an expensive backend starter. I fully understand the cynicism behind the reactions and share the general pessimism myself, but at least from a more neutral standpoint, it's been encouraging to see Huntington moving more swiftly this offseason, as though there is a bit of an overarching plan behind things.
I'm not entirely sanguine about the remaining dominos, but I do have to assume between the aggression for Chisenhall as an above replacement stopgap, and going back to the big investments in Archer and Kela, there has to be more than simply a reshuffling of smaller parts at play this offseason. For example, even if the next moves to take place were this Cervelli trade and a minor move for Ahmed, we'd be in a slightly better position independently of whether or not money was going back into the team. We'd still be firmly in the mediocrity window that Huntington has us in anyways, but the broader picture would be more savvy small market GMing. And if we moved in those ways and then used some of the money for Dozier or Lowrie on a short deal, I'd be pretty happy with the status of the offseason, even if arguably we're just a younger and more cost-controlled team who has a chance to win 85 games.
To put it even more starkly and perhaps controversially, I'm just not entirely convinced that any reasonable set of moves can do much to chance how one should look at the team on paper. The best improvements would be a Bell renaissance, Moran developing a power stroke, and Archer finding a way to be an ace again. We aren't signing Machado. We certainly could and should have been in the mix for a guy like Segura, but even if we had landed him for basically spare parts, we'd be better off on paper but I'm still not sure we'd be firmly in WC contention in the way that we will be if it's mid-May and Moran has 8 HRs and Archer has tossed 3-4 absolute gems, etc. That's just the reality of the situation with this team right now, for better or worse.