Hewett, Gruzewski and McMullin are the players that were recruited with the traded selections.
It is correct.
I did not include the 4th rounders perhaps I should have.
Those are the players drafted with the picks Richmond gave, that part is correct. It is highly unlikely they would have been drafted by Richmond at picks 14, 22 and 34 if Richmond retained those picks.
Pick 49 was a 3rd rounder too, going back Richmond's way and used on Kaleb Smith.
They are just fair deals for all parties at the time they were struck. If Richmond retained the picks and eschewed Taranto and Hopper then sure, they get 4 more decent prospects in the door, but they would be reduced to trying to hook gun mids as free agents, then you run into another problem, the $700-750k deal is now a $900-$1m deal and that is if one or two of these types become available any time soon.
Here is the recent history of gun inside mid free agents(marquee wage $700k+ types) changing hands:
2022 - nil
2021 - nil
2020 - Zac Williams reportedly $850k+ recruited as a mid, total failure there
2019 - nil
2018 - nil
2017 - Rockliff?
2016 - nil
2015 - nil
2014 - nil
2013 - Dale Thomas, Del Santo?
2012 - nil
That is the whole history of marquee inside mids changing hands as free agents and I am not even sure some of those qualify, and you certainly wouldn't say any of them worked out very well for the new club. And Thomas and Williams aren't/weren't really even inside mids.
So you rule out getting a decent one as a free agent based on that. It leaves trading - which Richmond elected to do, and you pay the price in draft picks, or drafting and putting aside an extremely rare player like Tim Kelly, you are usually waiting 5 years for your guy you took in the draft to be a chance to start outplaying finals level inside mids in big games.
Richmond has a strategy, the strategy may or may not work out perfectly, but it looks very sound to me.