The MLB genie: One wish for fans of all 30 teams ... with a catch

After much thought, the Giants fan finally asked the all-powerful baseball genie for his wish: That Tim Lincecum could still, in the year 2019, throw 97 mph for 200 innings a season, like Max Scherzer does.

"OK," the genie said. "What'll you give me for it?"

The fan was confused. The genie explained that some genies like to come up with clever ways to unexpectedly curse any fulfilled wish, but this genie felt all that was unnecessarily cruel. This genie stated the stakes right up front: Any wish could be granted, but it would require the sacrifice of something of roughly equal emotional or tangible value. The more that is asked for, the greater the cost.

The genie said, "So, would you trade the 2014 World Series -- the team's third in five years, an overflow of confetti that one might argue had proved little the first two titles hadn't already -- for Tim Lincecum being able to throw 97 mph for 200 innings five years later?"

The Angels fan's dilemma: A better Brandon Wood but a not-quite-as-good Mike Trout

After much thought, the Angels fan asked for her wish: That the Angels won the 2019 World Series. The genie sighed, and explained that there are two wishes impossible to fulfill. One is winning a World Series. Simply too big to be granted.

So the Angels fan asked for her other wish: that Brandon Wood had a long and productive career. Wood, perhaps the failed prospect of this century -- ranked as high as third on Baseball America's prospect list, after a high-A season in which he hit 43 homers and 51 doubles in just 130 games as a shortstop -- finished his career with minus-3.8 WAR, five seasons with the Angels and every one of them below replacement level. His journey took him to four more organizations, and to independent ball, until as a 29-year-old he hit .098/.156/.159 for the Sugar Land Skeeters and finally quit. The Angels fan had watched Wood work harder than anybody, to show up amid all the failure and just keep trying until he wasn't allowed to try anymore, at which point his promising career had become the scary story player development directors tell their coaches around the campfire. The fan wishes Wood could have had a better career. Not a Hall of Fame one or anything, but a good one: 30 more WAR than he actually had. Todd Frazier's career, basically.

The genie agreed, if the fan would give up just 20 of Mike Trout's career WAR. The Angels still gain wins, in the trade. They don't miss any playoff appearances, since they've made only one with Trout (and by plenty, that year). And Trout would still be the best player in baseball! He just wouldn't be all that historic. Instead of being the greatest player ever through age 27, by WAR, he'd be 14th -- just behind Albert Pujols and Eddie Mathews, just ahead of Willie Mays (but without the military service). Instead of having passed a couple dozen iconic Hall of Famers' career WARs this year, he would be just now passing those on Cooperstown's lowest rungs. Instead of three MVP awards and an unprecedented run of top-five finishes, he'd probably have just the one win and a bunch of top-15 finishes. We'd all follow him. He just wouldn't be the most celebrated baseball player of the generation. How we all treat Mookie Betts: That's how we'd treat Mike Trout.

The A's fan's dilemma: A Moneyball World Series but a 13-year playoff drought

After much thought, the A's fan asked for his wish: That the A's drafted Mike Trout, not Grant Green, in 2009.

The genie sighed, and explained that there are two wishes impossible to fulfill. One is drafting Mike Trout, because that wish had already been fulfilled for a different wisher. (You didn't really think Mike Trout slipped to the 25th pick without some supernatural influence, did you?)

So the A's fan asked for his other wish: That the Moneyball A's of 2002 had made it to the World Series. The genie can't promise a World Series victory, but can get the team to the World Series, can make sure the A's actually win a couple of playoff series. And in doing so, can completely reshape Billy Beane's legacy, not as a visionary whose creations kept failing under stress -- 10 postseason losses in 11 postseason rounds -- but instead as the star of a movie that has 20 more minutes of footage and, perhaps, an actual happy ending. For the next decade, A's fans wouldn't have had to hear about how they needed to bunt more.

All the genie asked for is undoing five playoff appearances: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2018 and 2019. It seems like a lot. But none of those teams actually went anywhere in the playoffs. All were one-round-and-out, including three losses in wild-card games. Yes, this would mean the A's would now be in a 13-year playoff drought. But the genie isn't saying the A's would have to be bad in those years. They could get eliminated on the last weekend of the season, after summers full of excitement and relevance! Is that really that much worse than losing in the wild-card game, and would it not all be worth it to have taken peak Barry Zito, peak Mark Mulder and peak Tim Hudson into a Bay Bridge Series against the Giants? Would a long playoff drought be less painful than a much longer World Series drought?

The Astros fan's dilemma: KeepingJ.D. Martinezbut drafting Brady Aiken

After much thought, the Astros fan asked for her wish: That J.D. Martinez was never released.

Houston let him go in spring training 2014 -- when Martinez was 26 years old and crowded out of an outfield that included L.J. Hoes and Robbie Grossman-- just before he turned into a superstar, with the second-highest OPS in baseball over the six years since. There's reason to believe that breakout could have happened in Houston as it did in Detroit: He had already, in the previous winter, made the radical swing changes that remade him, and he had just hit .312/.387/.570 in winter ball. Martinez might have given the Astros another All-Star power hitter during their World Series years -- at their worst positions, DH and left field. He wouldn't be remembered as the one egregiously bad player assessment the Astros made in their smarter-than-y'all years.

The genie said: OK. But now the Astros will have signed Brady Aiken in the 2014 draft.

Aiken, the first overall pick, didn't sign after the Astros got spooked by his medical records. Maybe under the Astros' care he wouldn't have suffered the injuries that have slowed him since. Maybe he'd be thriving now. But OK, probably not. More important, anyway, is this: If the Astros had signed Aiken, they wouldn't have gotten the second overall pick in 2015, which was their replacement pick for not signing Aiken. That pick yielded Alex Bregman. What looked like a terrible and controversial mistake in 2014 led to them getting their best player.

This isn't as simple as "Martinez or Bregman." The Astros also had the No. 5 pick in that 2015 draft -- it would have been the No. 4 pick had they signed Aiken in 2014 -- and for all we know Bregman might still have fallen to them. And anyway, Bregman wasn't that crucial to the Astros' 2017 World Series -- he became a star the next year, in 2018 -- and the Astros might well have won the title with Martinez instead, and for all we know they might have won it all in 2015 with Martinez (they lost in a close division series) and they might have made the playoffs in 2016 with Martinez. And they might still have ended up with Bregman anyway (but not Kyle Tucker, their No. 5 pick in the Bregman draft).