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.