The moves downgraded the team in the near-term.
This may or may not be true. Vazquez is a career 0.262 hitter. 0.700 slugging, pretty average. His defense is solid but his arm seems to have declined some. Great citizen no doubt. Just as a pure fan, I am sad to see him go. Replacing him with a platoon of McGuire, Plawecki, and maybe some play from AAA players will probably end up with somewhat less offense in the near term but how much? Vazquez has 83 hits through 100+ games. So do we end up with 40 hits from the catcher position instead of 50? And maybe we are able to throw out a few more runners with McGuire's higher throw out percentage. And Pham is probably going to get those 10 hits over Jackie Bradley if he is in the outfield rotation.
I don't see these moves as resulting in a measurable downgrade. It is certainly not an upgrade in any way though so if you want to criticize that, it is certainly fair. The strategy seems to to make minor moves that help more in the future but don't really hurt the current team. They will probably do a few more moves so let's see. Most fans are probably not going to be satisfied with that. I feel indifferent. Without getting our pitchers back healthy, there is no trade that is going to change our trajectory for this season all that much.