I've always been against this potential trade, especially for the reported price. He's an average player who has a bit of mongrel but he's small, slow and an inside player. We have far better inside midfielders and he isn't much of a half forward (30 goals from the previous 3 years combined).
We have better players for those roles at present and wasting salary cap and draft picks on him would be a huge blunder. When topping up your list for a flag tilt, there are certain criteria you want to look at.
I) Firstly, is the player of a high quality? Baker is average.
II) If not, is he a young player with improvement ahead? No, he will be 27 next year and is at his peak.
III) Does he fill a hole in your list? He'd sit behind a long list of inside midfielders where Brodie and Erasmus can't get a game (let alone any potential midfielders we draft with our 3 first round picks). He also hasn't really played much as a half forward but would also be well down the pecking order there.
IV) Is he very cheap or free? Baker is not a free agent so we will have to pay for him. A lot of Eastern state media have him at minimum 1 first round draft pick with some suggesting 2. Both of those are outrageous suggestions. He'd be at most a mid to late 2nd round pick given he probably has a few years left and isn't particularly good (he played almost every game for the last 3yrs and averaged 19 touches, many of them not particularly damaging).
V) Will it hurt the growth of your existing players? Yes. He would limit the games we're able to give to our existing youth.
VI) Do you need experienced players? No. There's an existing core of older players like Fyfe, Sonny, Pearce and even JOM however a lot of our core youth are now at the stage where they are leading the team themselves. We have no need for just experience.
VIII) Do you have salary cap room? We do have some ready for a big play but that needs to be invested in either someone big who makes a large impact or retaining existing players/youth who are coming out of contract soon. A lot of our youth is tied up however we can always renegotiate contracts to front end contracts for now and carry a war chest into future years. There's no need to throw our salary cap room at someone who adds little value.
TLDR
Hard pass. We don't need him and he would set back our development and chances of improvement.
