This is a trade that needs two more months before we can evaluate it.

The Dodgers traded Yasiel Puig, Alex Wood, Matt Kemp, Kyle Farmer, and $7 million to the Reds for Homer Bailey, Josiah Gray, and Jeter Downs. Here are 11 thoughts about the deal:

1.Yasiel Puig turned 28 just two weeks ago. There is so much to digest with the whole Puig experience — the tools, the quirks, the bees in his pants — that it’s easy to forget that he’s still baseball-young. His career numbers don’t look that scintillating until you adjust for Dodger Stadium, and then they’re pretty sweet indeed. A career 127 OPS+ would be good for someone with Matt Adams’ tools, but then you can remember that Puig can run, throw, and catch, too.

Considering all this, it’s hard to see what the Dodgers didn’t like. Was it the attitude? Was it the glut of outfielders, including the cheap-and-playable Alex Verdugo? Was it the knowledge that they weren’t going to sign Puig to a long-term deal, so they might as well exchange him for underpaid youngsters who can subsidize the huge contracts they do give out?

Maybe. But if we’re going to look for the simplest path to building a better baseball team, already employing a reasonably priced five-tool outfielder in the prime of his career seems like a pretty good start.

2. Alex Wood will turn 28 in about two weeks. There isn’t a whole lot to digest about the whole Wood experience — his name is a complete sentence, at least phonetically, which is kind of neat — so it’s easy to forget just how hard it is to find effective, young pitchers with an extremely high floor to go with a moderately high ceiling. It was just last year that he finished ninth in the Cy Young voting.

Considering all this, it’s hard to see what the Dodgers didn’t like? Was it the complete-sentence thing? Was it the glut of starting pitchers, including Ross Stripling, Julio Urias, and Caleb Ferguson, all talented enough to be in a contending rotation but already out of the Dodgers’ projected rotation, even without Wood?

Maybe. But if we’re going to look for the simplest path to building a better baseball team, already employing a reasonably priced, low-floor starting pitcher in the prime of his career seems like a pretty good start.

3. Which is all to say that if the goal of this trade from the Dodgers’ point of view was to build a baseball team, we’re missing some key information. That’s not a revelation or a twist; anyone who thinks about this trade for more than two seconds immediately spins around and looks skyward for the other shoe. The next move might be Craig Kimbrel, or they could trade for Corey Kluber, or they could sign [dramatic music] Bryce Freaking Harper. But there has to be another move.

Right?

RIGHT?

4. Yes.

But, hear me out, what if the Dodgers used their vast financial resources to add someone like Kimbrel or Harper by using “money”? As in, the team just signed the players. Maybe both of them. Like the old days.

Then they would be over the fake-ass salary cap. Yet they wouldn’t care. Because they’re the Dodgers. Guggenheim Partners didn’t buy them just to be a bunch of spendthrifts. It’s not like they wanted to give the immediate impression that money was no object, just to reconnect with fans who were disgruntled by the Frank McCourt era, only to quietly follow that up with an Excel-drunk path to fiscal responsibility that only a bunch of MBA dorks could love.

Right?

RIGHT?

5. Alright, fine, baseball isn’t like that anymore, and we’re heading for a bloody labor war. While the strike or lockout is going on, I will rank every baseball game ever released on the SNES, so I’ll be fine. Let’s just accept this as a new reality and evaluate deals within this dumb, unnecessary framework.

Yes, the Dodgers are going to do something else with the money that they’ve saved in this deal.

No, I’m not entirely sure it will be more valuable than what they would have gotten from Puig and Wood.

Which means the trade’s success will hinge on the prospects the Dodgers got back. One of them is supposed to be a Ben Zobrist-type. Plays lots of positions, has a good stick, all that jazz. That could be incredibly valuable.

It would be valuable because it would allow the Dodgers to save even more money in the future, not because it would help them win the 2019 World Series, their first in over three decades.

We’re heading for a bloody labor war.

I haven’t played any of those SNES baseball games, so I’m a completely blank slate.

6. Remember those two months when everyone was like, “Yeah, Matt Kemp is back, baby!” That was weird, right? That was really weird.

I didn’t buy it, though. Not for a second. Vote Grant.

7. The Reds are trying. We could have figured as much, considering that they’ve been the subject of rumors from J.T. Realmuto to Corey Kluber and back, and I really, really respect this. In an age when most bad teams are all trying to replicate the phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes path of the Astros or Cubs, the Reds are trying.

Now they have Yasiel Puig and Alex Wood.

Now what? They still lost 95 games last year, which is five games worse than a 90-loss team. And those teams are terrible.

The Reds are in the NL Central, a division in which the worst team that wasn’t the Reds could have finished second in the AL Central or NL East. That’s the fourth-place team. And the Reds are ostensibly chasing the first-place team now. Is this the kind of trade that can turn a 95-loss team into a 95-win team.

Well, no. But baby steps! They have two obvious net positives and more time to spend money or trade prospects. They have a year or two more of Joey Votto’s Hall of Fame portfolio, and they also have Eugenio Suarez and Scooter Gennett. That’s 50 percent of the lineup looking like an absolute buzzsaw, and now they have Wood and Tanner Roark to anchor a rotation with aspirations of being normal. Luis Castillo could be good again, you see, and there are young pitchers to work in. They have one of the better relievers you keep forgetting about, and they just locked him up.

This team isn’t as far away as you think.

8. They’re still pretty freaking far away, so this can’t be it for their offseason. And I’m not sure if the answer is “trade the rest of your prospects,” either, because that seems even messier.

The Reds will need to spend money.

9. The Dodgers will need to spend money.

All of these teams should spend more money, dammit. I’m not sure how many games of Tecmo Super Baseball I really want to play, you know.

But the big takeaway from this deal is that it could work for both sides ...

...

...

IF

...

...

... something else happens. Something else has to happen. The Reds can’t dust off their hands after getting Roark, Wood, and Puig, loudly proclaiming the offseason to be an unqualified success.

The Dodgers can’t trade away two contributors, both in their primes, for two prospects in the bush. Not unless there’s something else coming. Bryce Harper is the obvious candidate, but he would still put the Dodgers over the fake-ass salary cap, and I’m getting the feeling that the Quicken dorks really are running the place now. This is about getting under the salary cap and staying there. So I’m guessing Kimbrel or Dallas Keuchel or (other). Willing to be wrong. Guessing that I’m not.

just spend the money, you rich idiots

Regardless, what we have here is a trade that can’t be evaluated yet. Lots of names going in both directions. Nothing to listen to until the final tracks are laid down.

10. Hot damn, I’ll miss Yasiel Puig in a Dodgers uniform.

He was simply a remarkable heel, all bees, magic, and fury. He never lived up to the promise of his first 1,000 at-bats, but he was always, undeniably, Yasiel Puig, and you wanted to watch. I’ve seen some sentiments on Twitter that Reds fans won’t know what they’re getting, that there will be a stodgy contingent absolutely appalled at his antics. But I’ll take the under on that. Once you watch Puig with a this-is-my-team mindset, you love the guy. He’s endlessly entertaining.

He’ll go to Great American Ball Park now, boosting his numbers beyond where they would have been at Dodger Stadium. Alex Wood won’t have the same luck, but he’ll ply his trade with a team that’s clearly trying. Matt Kemp will be a bat off the bench. The prospects the Dodgers got will help save Guggenheim Partners money in the future, just like Corey Seager and Cory Bellinger are helping the Dodgers save enough money to get under the fake salary cap. We’re all rooting for Guggenheim Partners, after all.

Puig on another team is gross. Check it out for yourself:

Gross.

And yet, this is how it happens. Tom Seaver is a Met until he’s a Red until he’s a White Sock. Steve Carlton is a Cardinal until he’s a Phillie. Jim Thome is an Indian until he’s a Phillie. And those are just the Hall of Famers. There were no protections that Puig was going to stick around, no guarantees, and he certainly wasn’t an MVP candidate. I can understand why this was the right move.

There have to be more of those right moves coming, from both sides.

Welcome to baseball in 2018-2019, in which we’re about two years away from the Rays acquiring Andris Biedrins and his expiring contract for cap purposes. This is a very sketchy deal for both teams ... unless there’s something to follow it up with.

There’s probably something to follow up with.

This is a fair enough trade in a vacuum for both sides. We just need to see the rest of what they’re doing. Until we get that, it’s also a super confusing trade. The Dodgers were better off with Puig and Wood before today. The Reds were better off with a robust farm system before today. For them to alter that, they would have to be confident that more moves are coming.

More moves are coming, even if it’s sad to say goodbye to the Yasiel Puig Era.

11. Unless we should be saying goodbye to the Homer Bailey Era. Unless the Reds are happy saying goodbye to the Homer Bailey ERA.

The Dodgers and Reds made a trade on Friday. We’ll have to wait a month or two to figure out if it was a good trade.

I hate those trades.