Read Sports Geek and Loyal Homer’s arguments on which team did themselves the most harm at the trade deadline.
Well, the trade deadline has come and gone on for another season in Major League Baseball.
To celebrate, the bundles of sunshine and positivity that are the staff here at TSD decided to take a look back on the 2009 MLB trade season and discuss which team in the league had the worst trade season. Let’s be honest – they can’t ALL be winners, right?!
So, in the quest for identifying the owner of this dubious distinction, each of us are writing about the team we feel did themselves the most harm in their actions leading up to last Friday and the MLB trade deadline.
Sports Geek will arguing that it was the Cleveland Indians and their fire sale which was the worst of the season.
Loyal Homer will argue that the annual purge of Pittsburgh Pirates talent sits atop the mountain as most damaging.
For Bleacher Fan, I looked to John F. Kennedy for guidance, who once said, “There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction”.
The Toronto Blue Jays are about to learn that lesson the hard way!
For weeks leading up to the trade deadline of the 2009 MLB season, it seemed that you couldn’t turn on ESPN, pick up an issue of Sports Illustrated, or go to any sports news source without finding at least one mention about Blue Jays pitcher Roy Halladay and which new city he would be pitching in when August first rolled around. Everyone (including the folks in Toronto) acted as if it were inevitable that Halladay would be pitching elsewhere by the end of the season, and the only mystery appeared to be where that would be.
The frenzy began when Halladay, a six time All Star and former American League Cy Young Award winner, expressed interest in testing free-agency next year following the expiration of his most recent contract extension in Toronto, a three year deal signed in 2006 that was worth $40M.
In response to his comments, Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi decided to shop Halladay around to the other teams in the league, all in an effort to make a deal that would still net some value to the Toronto organization upon Halladay’s seemingly inevitable departure. When you consider the year that Halladay has had so far, there was little doubt that Ricciardi would have any difficulty in finding teams interested in the ace.
Halladay, who has been undoubtedly among the best pitchers in the American League for the past several years, has so far pitched in the 2009 season to an 11-4 record, a 2.68 ERA and 129 strikeouts to only 11 walks. He also was named the starting pitcher for the American League All-Star team when they took the field last month. With those kind of numbers, there were many teams interested in dealing with Toronto to bring Halladay on board.
So what does Ricciardi do? He prices himself right out of the market. Rather than face the fact that Halladay will likely be gone from the organization by the end of 2010, Ricciardi foolishly states that he wants to be “blown away” by a trade offer if he’s going to deal Halladay. Essentially, Ricciardi had set too high a price for any team to seriously consider working with Toronto.
The Philadelphia Phillies, who seemed like the leading contenders to land Halladay, decided to look elsewhere when they were unwilling to meet Ricciardi’s demands. They didn’t have to look far, though, as they found the Cleveland Indians, who were willing to deal reigning Cy Young winner Cliff Lee for a minor league prospect and a free coupon from Subway. When Lee was traded to the Phillies, Ricciardi should have realized that his price was, perhaps, too high. Instead, he persisted on demanding top value for his ace.
In fairness, I have no problem with Ricciardi trying to retain as much value as possible for a proven ace like Halladay. But, with other talent on the market like Lee, or Jake Peavy who FINALLY has been moved to the South side of Chicago, the going rate for pitchers just was not as high as Ricciardi hoped it would be. He made his mistake in either the refusal or the inability to read the writing on the wall and to adjust his expectations accordingly. As a result, the Blue Jays organization will suffer.
Now, instead of seeing some kind of return on investment for Halladay, the Blue Jays are going to keep him through the remainder of the 2009 season, which is like winning the sportsmanship trophy in high school. It means nothing, because the season is all but over for Toronto as they currently sit 12 games behind the New York Yankees in the AL East. As they move into the 2010 season, Ricciardi will likely try to shop Halladay around again, but next year the buyers will be holding all the cards because they know that they will have a shot at Halladay for nothing at the end of the season.
Ricciardi’s inactivity, and his unwillingness to make any concessions when the pressure was on for him to make a deal will ultimately cost the Blue Jays much more next year, when they watch Halladay just walk away from the team and have nothing to show for it.
