What does it mean to be wanted and let go at the same time?
That's the question hanging over two franchises this morning after BNN reported the trade between the Numenor Kings and the Moria Miners: left fielder Fomige Rubyeye, 26, and right-hander Darron Oathworker, 23, heading to Moria, while 25-year-old southpaw Halpaeril Moonsbreath makes the reverse trip to Numenor. Mixed emotions, per sources close to the players involved. Which is to say: the kind of emotions that don't fit neatly into a press release.
Rubyeye is the headliner. Long-time readers will remember the fractured ankle that ended her 2052 season before it properly began — MESN covered the news out of Numenor's training complex last summer with the quiet dread that tends to follow a player who was just finding herself. She's 26 now, healthy by all accounts, and Moria is betting she's still that player. The Miners get a left fielder with something to prove and a right-hander in Oathworker young enough that the projections remain more dream than data.
Numenor, for their part, get a pitcher they've watched at close range for three seasons. Moonsbreath no-hit the Minas Ithil Wyrms last year — a game that already has its own MESN file — and the Kings have apparently decided they'd rather own that arm than face it twice a year. Whether that's addition by subtraction for Moria or a shrewd recalibration for Numenor depends on which version of Rubyeye shows up in the Miners' lineup come opening day.
The Kings also have injury concerns of their own to manage. Reliever Trundagh Aden is five to six months away with a torn rotator cuff, leaving the bullpen shorter than anyone wanted this side of spring training. Moonsbreath won't fix a bullpen, but another arm in the rotation conversation eases the arithmetic.
As for Oathworker — 23 years old, headed to a new city, a new dugout, a new set of teammates who don't yet know what he orders after a long road trip. He almost didn't make this roster. Now he's the piece Moria decided was worth the ask.
That's a quiet kind of validation.