A good analysis, but not the point I was trying to make.
WE want to get their max production, even if it means losing a prospect by waiting a year.
If we are in the race at the deadline, everybody would be eager to trade prospects for an impactful upgrade. There is no more impactful upgrade than Jose. Why trade him early in order to gain an extra prospect, if we expect to spend a prospect to get a lesser Jose at the deadline? Look at it this way. Jose IS our deadline pick up.
The earliest I would trade Jose would be right before his walk year. Would we get less in return? Probably. But we also would get one or two years of one of the very best players, the likes of which we haven't seen in 20 years.
The trade players early, rather than late, crowd would keep trading the better players before they reached their peak, or just at their peak...meaning we never have a peak performer for more than a year or two..and with three years of control he'd be gone.
Right now, we DO have an elite farm system, and we DO have Arias and Gimenez....plus Freeman, Miller, ARosa, Rocchio, Bracho, Clement, Polacio, and Chang (if you still look at Chang as a prospect).
All of them cannot be on the 40 man at once, but all of them HAVE to be after the season. Plus a whole bunch of other highly thought of youngsters.
We obviously can wait until after the WS to trade them, but why would another team give us anything of value in return if they knew a bunch of them will be either designated or exposed to the Rule Five?
We've already seen in the last months from posters that seem to know wow reports on Arias, Gimenez, Freeman, and Miller. 'He's really filled out. You won't recognize him. The FO is really excited. Yada yada.'
If all this is true...and there is no reason to think otherwise...we could trade two of them, without missing a beat.
We are holding a gold mine full of what at the moment is the most highly valued (way overvalued IMO) commodity in baseball...young, well regarded prospects. If you want to talk about trading at peak value, look at these guys.
Or, we can try to hang onto as many as possible, even though we can only play two of them at a time...and allow them to become the next Zimmer, Greg Allen, Chang, Erik Haase. We keep them around until they have no value and no options left.