Agree 100% on the Rays don’t trade for peak value guys, particularly pitchers. This trade makes no sense from the Rays perspective for other reasons too. Why swap Eflin for Gilbert in the first place? What in the world would the Rays do with France, as the only reason to trade Yandy is to open a roster spot for Mead, Aranda or JC.

I get that it is very unrealistic to trade two of your top players while you're contending. My main thought here was that the Rays are at their the highest payroll in years by a large margin and that payroll was mostly constructed when they were expecting three other young cost controlled stars (Franco, Rasmussen and McClanahan) to be plying this year. Both Eflin and Diaz are at peak value, older and expensive compared to payroll size. Eflin going down for TJS would make for a dead contract worth 10-20% of payroll, Gilbert would be half that and still under team control after coming back from TJS. Gilbert and France are downgrades, with upside, that would keep them competitive at a much lower cost and allow them to sign younger players to long low cost deals. Plus if the Rays can help Gilbert improve the way they helped Eflin, then he'll be an amazing steal.