Trades Of The Decade: Griffey To The Reds

Anyone have any knowledge of what the Braves, Astros, and Mets offered? I'd be really interested in comparing offers with the power of hindsight.

The M's asked the Braves for Andruw Jones, Kevin Millwood, and Ryan Klesko. Braves said no thanks, hung up, and declared themself out of the hunt.

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/12/sports/baseball-notebook-as-braves-learn-price-for-griffey-is-steep.html

Junior apparently vetoed a trade to the Mets that would have been for Armando Benitez, Octavio Dotel, and Roger Cedeno:

http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/121599/spo_1215990047.shtml

I'm having difficulty finding any specific mention of an Astros offer.

Background on Griffey rejecting the Mets:
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/15/sports/baseball-griffey-may-have-been-a-met-but-says-team-lost-chance.html?scp=1&sq=Griffey&st=nyt

"What might have been if Griffey stayed healthy ?"

Probably accused by Canseco of being on steroids... joke, sort of, Canseco's a jerk. If he did turn out to be the second coming of Ruth, I don't see anything changing in Cincinnati. Their problem was always a lack of good pitching. But there would the great "would you rather have Junior or Albert?" debate.

The Rangers traded Masset and John Danks to the White Sox for Brandon McCarthey. Good Job Rangers

Though there was certainly plenty of sentiment that Junior was the "best player in the game", I'm fairly sure he was being routinely outproduced by Bonds throughout the '90's.

In any event, as a Reds fan, the Griffey trade was almost surreal event. It's sad the Reds ownership group was unwilling to spend anything else, particularly on pitching, to take advantage of the momentum his acquisition (and the '99 season) generated.

They completely failed to leverage the launch of GABP. Then Griffey kept getting injured and the Reds kept refusing to move him to RF even though it was abundantly clear he needed to move - making a bad situation worse.

It will be interesting to do a historical analysis that looks at the value each team realized from the deal.

Why did he agree to go to Cincy? Just curious. What was it about their team and the National League he so valued?

It seems to me that Griffey wanted to stay out of the spotlight and chose a smaller market club for that very reason. I wonder if he was content to become nearly invisible after that trade.

Griffey just wanted to go home. He grew up in Cincinnati and played high school there.

Don't forget Griffey's 901 K's. Or Bonds .432 OBP to Griffey's .384 OBP.

Though you are correct he was not significantly better. Just a little!

Bonds probably started juicing in 2001. That year he hit 24 more home runs than he'd ever hit in his career, and his slugging jumped 175 points. He could have started the year before, where hit 49 home runs, which was a career best at the time, although a less substantial jump. Odds are he started in 2001, the year after McGwire and Sosa went crazy with the juice, to prove he was the superior ballplayer, which he was.

Turned out to be a horrible trade for the Reds IMO (even if he had stayed healthy).

It definitely helped sell tickets for a while but it also cash strapped Bowden/Schott/Lindner to the point where they couldn't sign any decent SP'er. They had some of the worst SP'ers in the bigs during this past decade.

Neagle, Villone, Harnisch, Bell, Parris, Dessens, Reitsma, Hamilton, Davis, Acevedo, Haynes, Fernandez, Hudson, Bale, Dumatrait, Fogg, Ortiz, Williams, Wilson, Hancock, Anderson, Etherton, Auston, Hall, Moehler, Estes, Reith, Ramirez, Claussen, Haynes, Belisle.

Take out Harang and Arroyo (who they traded for when they were cheap) there was no one. The few times they did find cash to spend on SP'ers they got burned badly...Milton, Dempster, etc.