I think it's definitely the right move to give Cruz a breather vs Imanaga. Having him as an option to pinch hit vs. a righty reliever is also a good card to keep in your hand, depending on whether Falter can keep it close.
In terms of trading for a bat, it's hard to say this early, and young impact talent is going to take an enormous haul since hitters don't carry the same injury risk as pitchers. I think
@ChaosAgent is in the ballpark for what Robert might cost, though he's also tricky to ballpark right now because he has basically been hurt all year and is also actually making a decent amount of money, which doesn't give him the disproportionate value that team control players sometimes have.
The player I'd most want to target is Jazz Chisholm. He's putting together a nice campaign though not yet what his peak could be given the raw skills. The Marlins are in a total disaster of a season and I fully expect them to do as much trading as they can do.
Unless I am mistaken, they still have the same pitching group that helped develop them into a powerhouse before all of the terrible injury luck that they've had. Trading Jazz would be a hard pill to swallow since offense is their problem, but I think they are also pretty cold blooded about the kind of approach they want to take. Last year was a fluke nice run to the playoffs, but now it's time to pivot and aim at a window that's after the current Phillies and to some extent Braves are older.
Not sure how to ballpark a trade exactly, but we have enough SP depth to include multiple pitching prospects in a deal which rebuilding teams always like. I'm very wary of throwing around Chandler or TJ in trade proposals but when you are wishcasting for guys like Robert or Jazz it's kind of hard to be picky.
I believe Jazz has 2.5 years of control remaining. It's a shame that Suwinski's value has to be in the toilet right now, because Jazz isn't a platoon partner and Suwinski probably isn't going to have any value to a team that is fulling stripping things down to the bolts. He's probably just a separate issue who we have to figure out and hope he gets going somehow. Besides Johnson, the other MiLB guy who would be nice to have going to dangle in a trade is Lonnie White Jr. Frustrating that both guys are off to cold starts in a very hitter friendly environment.
Anyways, I think Jazz is slightly more obtainable in a deal and will also be cheaper financially than Robert. He's an organizational need and he's someone who I don't think we've seen reach his right tail outcome just yet. He's also an incredibly fun player... imagining both him and Cruz in the lineup with the steadier Reynolds and non-IL Hayes is pretty tantalizing. If we could somehow float Nick Kurtz down to our pick in the draft, that's a nice hitting core and Kurtz could move quick. He's a topic for another day, but I think he's actually feasible if Oakland isn't going to take him: figure he won't go 1-3 because Rockies will take a pitcher, and then if he gets past Oakland, our draft pool is only 593,000 less than the White Sox -- a lot of money in this context, but with a deep draft and presuming that they'd want to spread the money around more, might be an edge. Then the Royals likely aren't looking 1B and we have more spending power than both the Cardinals and Angels.