June is around the corner, and trade talks will begin in earnest. Most of the bigger recent June deals occurred toward the end of the month; let's take a look.
- June 3rd, 2009: Pirates traded Nate McLouth to the Braves for Charlie Morton, Gorkys Hernandez, and Jeff Locke. Pirates GM Neal Huntington could not resist the Braves' offer. McLouth has been disappointing for Atlanta, while the players the Pirates acquired still retain promise.
- June 27th, 2009: Indians traded Mark DeRosa to the Cardinals for Chris Perez and Jess Todd. DeRosa injured his wrist days after the trade and didn't produce in St. Louis. The book isn't closed on the Cards' side, as they snagged the #46 pick in this year's draft when DeRosa left as a free agent. Perez has a 3.51 ERA, 9.6 K/9, and 3.9 BB/9 in his Indians career, picking up a few saves along the way. Todd has yet to experience big league success.
- June 29th, 2007: Athletics traded Milton Bradley and cash to the Padres for Andrew Brown. Bradley raked for the '07 Padres, who just missed the playoffs. Bradley's season ended with a torn ACL on a bizarre incident. Given the uncertainty, GM Kevin Towers decided not to offer arbitration. Brown was released by the A's in January of '09.
- June 30th, 2006: Mariners traded Asdrubal Cabrera to the Indians for Eduardo Perez. A month later GM Bill Bavasi would trade Shin-Soo Choo to the Indians along with another player for Ben Broussard and cash. Choo became a star, while Cabrera is Cleveland's starting shortstop (he's currently recovering from a broken forearm). Both first basemen struggled in Seattle, though Broussard stuck around through the following season and was dealt for Tug Hulett. Thinking short-term, Bavasi did a lot of damage in the course of about a month.
- June 24th, 2004: Royals traded Carlos Beltran to the Astros for Octavio Dotel and John Buck; Royals traded Dotel to Athletics for Mark Teahen and Mike Wood. The Astros of course got a ton from Beltran in his brief time with the club. They added Eli Iorg and Tommy Manzella as draft picks for Beltran's departure. Teahen, Buck, and Wood were mostly disappointing for Kansas City. One thread of the Beltran deal is still somewhat alive for them in the form of Chris Getz and Josh Fields.
Those Mariners/Indians deals sure were lopsided.
Most definitely, I cringed when I read that Mariners/Indians paragraph. Commenters on this website bash Bavasi all the time, and those two trades are more than sufficient evidence.
The McLouth trade looks like a lose/lose so far. Nate and Melky are a nice .200 hitting outfield duo in Atlanta and Morton took a whole flight of steps backward after showing promise last season. Gorkys Hernandez is terrible but Locke looks OK so far.
And we all know Bavasi was bad, but man those deals were terrible. Imagine how the Mariners would look now with both of those guys. Shapiro should be arrested for robbery.
I didn’t realize the Cards offered DeRosa arbitration.
I don’t think Teahan should be labeled as disappointing.
Besides the fact that he really was the most liked player on the team, period, hes had his success.
I’m not the biggest fan, and I liked the Teahan-Getz/Fields trade, but Teahan played 1B, 2B, 3B, LF, RF and CF in his time in KC. He was the most versatile guy he had. His 2006 was incredible, his 07 was solid. He did tank since then.
Uttering “Bavasi” and “trade” in the same sentence makes me flinch as a lifelong Mariner fan. Looking over his tenure, Bavasi didn’t make ONE significant deal that turned out well for the Mariners. NOT ONE. The Sean Green/Aaron Taylor swap with Colorado he came out ahead but it was very small potatoes.A March trade that Bavasi botched gets over-looked quite a bit. The Matt Thornton for Joe Borchard deal. Thornton is a stud while Borchard is out of baseball, I think.The Bavasi era in Seattle was a plague.
Seattle did okay for themselves in the Putz/Gutierrez deal, though.
An exception proving the rule.