Oh yeah, the Clayton trade was on my 14th birthday.


The White Sox traded Tatis, Jr. for Big Game James. Hmmmm

Do Octavio Dotel next!

The 03 Astros had Billy Wagner, Dotel, and Brad Lidge. Lidge wasn't at his peak, but that is still 3 bad mother****er closers on one team.

Oh you mean the time Dotel was traded for Mark Teahen... I've actually written about this before!

The Jays gave up Edwin Jackson, Marc Rzepczysnki, Octavio Dotel, and Corey Patterson (and cash) to get Colby Rasmus and a bunch of garbage that STL didn't want anymore, and that Toronto didn't really either... PJ Walters, Brian Tallet, and Trever Miller. All were DFA'ed before the end of the season.

Now I know what you're saying: "Edwin Jackson?!? He was never a Blue Jay!" Oh contraire. The Jays traded Jason Frasor and Zach Stewart for Jackson and Mark Teahen, then later that day flipped Jackson, along with Dotel, Corey Patterson and Scrabble to land Rasmus. The Cardinals decided that they would rather Jon Jay in CF, and used Rasmus to get pitching for the stretch. (The Jays traded Miles Jaye and Daniel Webb to get Frasor back a few months later. Webb just recently crashed his ATV and died, sadly).

My big takeaway here, and it's only after the fact that I'm seeing this (unless I'm just wrong?) is Corey Patterson. Jays fans will remember that he started the 2011 season out as a minor league free agent, made the team out of spring training, and tore the cover off the ball in April and May. June and July were as bad as April and May were good, but that didn't stop John Farrell from playing him every day and batting him in the 2-hole. Anyway, Patterson carved out a decent little career: made $15M, hit the odd homer, and stole some bases. Got traded to a contender down the stretch in 2011 and it finally looked like he might see some postseason action, even as a pinch runner or something! Butnah, played so bad down the stretch that they just cut him from the playoff roster, and he never appeared in the bigs again.

Dotel pitched to a 1.57fip post-trade for STL, striking out everybody. Again, Jays fans will remember that Dotel, for some reason, was allowed to face lefties in Toronto, and as such, got ****ing lit up. Post-trade, he pretty much only ever faced RHB's and subsequently struck out 6.4 batters for every walk.

Now Rzepcynski was a decent little piece. Had an ERA under 3, 25 years old, and was straight murder to lefties, of which there were a bunch of really good ones in the AL East. The Jays really didn't want to give him up, but they saw a lot in Rasmus, and decided that they'd have an easier time finding a LOOGY than a controllable CF with upside.

Between Rzep and Dotel, there were some pretty significant contributions in the playoffs in 2011-- about 18 innings combined, and Rzep especially was pretty instrumental in the World Series win over Texas (see: David Freese for Jim Edmonds trade above). Jackson gave 78 solid innings down the stretch, and a good start in the ALDS to boot, so I think this was a pretty good trade for the Cards.

Jackson, Dotel and Patterson were all FA's at the end of the year. Rzep was traded for Juan Herrera (now 24, pitching in AA) at the '13 deadline. Rasmus gave the Jays 6.6WAR before walking in free agency after 2014. Teahen was released after the 2011 season and never played again.

Now Zach Stewart may be the most interesting part of this whole thing. He was drafted by Cincinnati, acquired by the Jays in the Scott Rolen deal along with Josh Roenicke and Edwin Encarnacion, both of whom the Jays lost on waivers. Of course, Edwin came back and became a franchise icon, but whatever. Stewart also ended up getting traded to Boston for Kevin Youkilis, who is also a noteworthy name.

So there you go! Well, unless you're talking about the other time Dotel was traded for Mark Teahen...?

edit- Part two, likely later today, will touch on the Beltran trade, because the real story lies within. One of my favorite and most convoluted trade trees is involved and it may not be who you think.

Fun! Fwiw, we called him “Scrabble” when he was a Cardinal.

Excellent posts

So did “we” when he was a jay

All I really know about Dotel was that he played briefly for the Braves and has probably played for half the teams in MLB over his career

Part 2-- the Beltran deal.

I think we can all appreciate Carlos Beltran, Mets fans notwithstanding. If we don't know what his early career was like, we can probably chalk it up to not being baseball fans for long enough, or not being old enough, not that the two are mutually exclusive. Beltran came up for his first full season at age 22, was immediately good, and proceeded to get even better, displaying 5 tools in his first 6 years with KC.

KC, around Beltran in 2004, was, however, a dumpster fire. Not often do teams give up in June, but hey, early 2000's Royals teams weren't your everyday clubs, and their best player was set to become a free agent. He was certainly having a good season in to June, but after the trade to Houston, Beltran went off and earned himself a contract, putting up 4.5WAR in just 90 games. Beltran would walk, and sign with the Mets in the offseason, but 4.5 WAR from a rental is always convenient.

To get that, we had a bit of a convoluted deal take place. Oakland was in pretty good shape in 04 themselves, but needed a bit of bullpen help. As mentioned in a previous post, Houston had a 3-headed monster at the back of their bullpen in Dotel/Lidge/Wagner for the 03 season, but only Lidge remained for the 04 stretch, as Dotel was sent from Houston to Oakland to land Beltran (they went and got Darren Oliver to help shoulder the load after Dotel). Nevermind that Dotel was just fair down the stretch for Oakland (and again the next before free agency), or that they ended up blowing a 5 game lead in September to lose the division by a game to Anaheim and miss the playoffs, because that's not really what we're after here, though it is the end of two branches in this exercise.

Dotel was originally traded from the Mets with Roger Cedeno for Derek Bell and Mike Hampton before the 2000 season. Both of those guys were brought in as 1-year reinforcements for a pretty good NYM team that ended up going to the World (i.e. Subway) Series. Hampton was a 4.7 WAR pitcher for his part; pretty worthwhile price. He'd go on to sign a big free agent deal himself, with COL that offseason.

Back to 04 though... let's remember that this was a 3-way deal. The Mets and Astros obviously had to give to get what they got, and this is often where these trades become fun. Rarely do we remember who the prospects are that got moved in those deadline deals, since they don't become much for a couple years.

Enter Mike Wood, Mark Teahen, and John Buck. Three guys that ended up going from wherever the frig they were the day before, to a perpetually rebuilding KC franchise. We've already discussed Teahen, a highly touted prospect who came up and had a pretty nice year in 2006, accruing 150% of his total career WAR that year. He'd get traded to Chicago in the 2009-2010 offseason for Chris Getz and Josh Fields. Fields sucked, and Getz... well he sucked too. Which is fitting, because Teahen sucked. All those careers petered out with releases or waiver claims or whatever. Moving on. Mike Wood also sucked. Moving on again.

That brings us to John Buck, KC's final hope in the Beltran deal. Now Buck was just a young fellow at the time of the Beltran trade, but KC had room for him. Big raw power and also willing to crouch behind home plate and catch 100MPH projectiles. Lots of value in that. He didn't really provide much over his 6 years in KC before walking after the 2009 season. (If you're keeping track, everybody involved in the Beltran trade ended up walking, at least eventually, as a free agent, or getting released, but I have a point here).

Buck signed with the Blue Jays and put together a pretty solid season, getting named to the allstar team and hitting 20 HR's, and parlayed that in to a 2 year deal with the Marlins pre 2011. That was the year that the Marlins went ****ing bonkers in free agency, trying to sign Pujols, and actually signing Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle, Heath Bell, changed to Miami from Florida, got new jerseys, and I believe left Joe Robbie and opened their new stadium?

That, of course, lasted all of one year, before Miami got rid of all their new toys, sending Reyes, Buerhle, Emilio Bonifacio and Josh Johnson to Toronto for a pile of kids and Yunel Escobar, sending Buck back to TOR. Buck wouldn't be a Jay for a month, before being shipped to the Mets with Noah Syndergaard and Travis d'Arnaud, in exchange for RA Dickey and two more catchers.

All told, three of the biggest, most confusing trades that I can remember all involved John Buck. The MIA-TOR trade is certainly worthy of it's own post, because that one has a pile of pieces that just kept on moving. The real takeaway here, though, is LOLKC. They had arguably the most dynamic youngster and eventual HOFer in their grasps, didn't build a good team around him for 6 years, traded him for prospects, and got nothing out of them either. Sounds kind of similar to what's happening in Anaheim.

This is great stuff. You should have your own thread.

Chris Getz is currently like the head of player development or something for the White Sox

Ah, John Buck. I felt bad for him being thrown into the Dickey trade, he was so excited to be coming back to Toronto.

Identify this person:

Yeah it must be really demoralizing to be thrown in to a trade strictly because of your salary. The Jays had no need for him, but the Marlins needed to move $4MM more off their books to make the trade even.

Why Sammy?

Lol Samwise

Less Samwise, more White Wizard.

Josh Beckett got arreseted last night https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/11/11/jo...low_twitter_si

He got traded twice! WS MVP in 03, then Florida tore it down and traded him, Mike Lowell, who is somehow Puerto Rican, and Guillermo Mota to Boston for 4 prospects. Lowell finished his career in Boston in 2010, earning a WS MVP in 07.

Mota got traded a bunch of times, so I'm sure there's a lot of really good stuff in there. Just looking through his transactions really quickly, I see 5 trades, each of which involving someone at least a bit notable, but also "Voluntarily retired" seems a bit oddly worded, no? Aren't most retirements voluntary? Doesn't that seem like a thing that you would write when you're trying to convince someone that he actually voluntarily retired when he really didn't? If you were to say "he retired" and left it at that, my knee-jerk would be to assume that it was voluntary and never question it, but because it says that he voluntarily retired I'm ****ing suspicious. I may need to dig deeper on this one at a later date.

Mota never pitched for the Red Sox; Boston shipped him to Cleveland a few months later with Andy Marte, Kelly Shoppach and Randy Newsom in exchange for Josh Bard, David Riske, and Coco Crisp. Crisp was the best of that bunch... gave 3 years of service before turning in to Ramon Ramirez, who turned in to a guy called Daniel Turpen, who eventually got claimed on waivers without ever appearing in the majors. Bard and Cla Meredith became Doug Mirabelli, who I believe was Wakefield's personal catcher. Riske became Javier Lopez, who eventually walked in free agency. Lotta moving parts on this Mota guy.

Back to Beckett... he was obviously pretty good, and was pretty instrumental in the 07 WS win. He was, of course, involved in the giant blockbuster that saw him, Carl Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez and Nick Punto go to LA for 4 prospects and James Loney. Boston was just looking to hit a reset button, because they didn't keep Loney or any of the prospects for very long (Rubby and Webster became Wade Miley, who became Roenis Elias and Carson Smith, de Jesus and Jerry Sands became Joel Hanrahan and Brock Holt). Of course, LA didn't get a ton out of the deal either. Gonzalez was a decent piece for a while, but I'm pretty sure I read that he went on vacation in Europe while the Dodgers were in the WS this year. He's under contract for $23MM this year and Bellinger is standing in his way at the moment. Beckett was okay before retiring at 34, probably involuntarily, thanks to an injury or a condition or whatever. Crawford rejuvenated his career a bit in LA too, but his best days were certainly in Tampa. He was eventually released.

As for the prospects that went to Florida-- Harvey Garcia and Jesus Delgado never amounted to much and ended up getting released and waived, respectively. The other two though...

Anibal Sanchez was a mainstay in the Marlins' rotation for 6.5 seasons (13.7 WAR over 800ish innings, I think he threw a no-hitter?), then was eventually traded to Detroit for Rob Brantly, Brian Flynn and Jacob Turner. Brantly got waived, Flynn was traded for Aaron Crow, and Turner provided practically no value to the Marlins before being traded for Jose Arias (retired, possibly voluntarily, never got past A-ball), and Tyler Bremer (released this past May).

Hanley Ramirez gave Miami 27 WAR over 7 seasons, and probably could have provided more if someone had gotten him off SS earlier and over to a position that he could actually play defensively. Hanley eventually got traded to the Dodgers with Randy Choate for Nathan Eovaldi and Scott McGough. Eovaldi, Garrett Jones and Domingo German turned in to Martin Prado and David Phelps. Prado is likely to get traded this offseason, Phelps got traded to Seattle for a pile of prospects this year at the deadline, but that kinda seems like quantity and not quality, though the jury is still kind of out on that one for another couple years.

Hanley signed as a free agent in Boston three years ago to bring this full circle. He has an option for 2019 that vests if he gets at least 497 PA's this season, so we could see him traded this year too. Hopefully to Miami.

say it ain't so, Sammy. Or at least tell us WTF is going on there...


eTA- Really enjoying the writeups big easy.

Sosa looks better than he did a couple months ago.

In regards to voluntary retirement, how many guys voluntarily retire? Turning down major league contracts.

At first glance, i thought it was Greg Maddux

Alex Anthopoulos is the new Barves GM, prolly a good hire

ppl gave him **** for what happened in Toronto, but they had a championship window so he took a shot
no one would be complaining if it worked

assume he's learned something things since then too

When I think of a Blue Jays GM, my first thought is still JP Ricciardi, even though that's been awhile.

David Ortiz definitely voluntarily retired. The Sox had a team option they definitely would've exercised on him.

Mark Buerhle definitely would've gotten a contract after his last season. Just to name a couple of guys from recent memory who were still in decent form when they hung it up.