Headlines

Go To Pro Hockey Rumors
Go To Hoops Rumors

Quick Hits: Hamilton, Feierabend, Draft, Lannan

By | at

The Major League career of former first baseman/outfielder Mark Hamilton consisted of 47 games with the Cardinals in 2010-11, a brief stint that netted Hamilton a World Series ring for his role in the Cards’ 2011 championship squad.  After being released by the Braves in July 2014, Hamilton stuck to his vow to go to medical school if he wasn’t a big league regular by his 30th birthday, and ESPN.com’s Alden Gonzalez writes that Hamilton is set to officially begin his medical career in June at two New York hospitals “at the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic.”  Though Hamilton is trained in interventional radiology, the early days of his six-year residency program will inevitably be focused on helping treat coronavirus patients.  While the pandemic has “been very eye-opening,”  Hamilton said, “I wanted to go into medicine because I really enjoyed caring for people. I enjoy being able to help others when they’re in their darkest hour, when they need somebody to both support them from a medical side and an emotional side. And I’m definitely going to be able to do that in my first year.”

Some more from around baseball…

  • Left-hander Ryan Feierabend signed with the Uni-President Lions of the Chinese Professional Baseball League during the offseason, so Feierabend his fellow CPBL peers have gotten their season underway in Taiwan while the rest of the baseball world is still on pause, The Toronto Star’s Gregor Chisholm writes.  Since Taiwan quickly enacted measures against COVID-19, the outbreak has been severely limited on the island, thus allowing for businesses, schools, and other larger public gatherings to continue to operate, albeit under safety restrictions.  CPBL games, for instance, are being played without fans in attendance.  Given how matters seem to be somewhat under control in Taiwan, Feierabend said he “would feel more comfortable” if his wife and children were in Taiwan rather than in the United States, both for safety reasons and simply so the family could be together.  “It’s a sacrifice being away…Having to deal with that while the pandemic is going on, it’s definitely stressful,” Feierabend said, praising his wife Sarah for being “the rock of our family.”
  • Arizona State’s Spencer Torkelson would be the first pick of this year’s amateur draft if MLB.com’s Jim Callis held the reins in the Tigers’ front office.  (Detroit has the first overall selection.)  Callis is a fan of Torkelson’s power potential, calling him “one of the biggest impact college bats in recent years” and saying he might deliver seasons in the range of 35 homers and a .280 average on a regular basis in the majors.  Vanderbilt outfielder/third baseman Austin Martin is a close second for Callis, and unsurprisingly, Torkelson and Martin also occupy the top two spots on MLB Pipeline’s list of the top 150 draft prospects.
  • The Blue Jays have made mental performance a major aspect of their player development system at both the Major League and minor league levels, with eight-year MLB veteran John Lannan was hired as the newest member of the six-person mental performance department this past January.  As The Athletic’s John Lott (subscription required) writes, Lannan went back to school to study sports psychology after retiring in August 2017, and realized the subject matter was instantly relatable to the modern player.  “Once I was going into all these deep dives into sports psychology, it just brought to mind a lot of situations throughout my career, where it started to make sense why I might have felt the way I felt and what I could have probably done about it if I’d known more about the subject,” Lannan said.  Lott outlines the Jays front office’s philosophy about the benefits of mental performance, and how the department’s role has now evolved with players stuck at home waiting out the pandemic.

Did The Orioles Find A Rotation Building Block Out Of Nowhere?

By | at

A team in a total rebuild is open to giving any player a chance, particularly when that team is drastically short on starting pitching.  With the Orioles in such a state in April 2019, it paved the way for John Means to enter the Orioles’ rotation, on the heels of three relief outings earlier that season and one (disastrous) 3 1/3-inning appearance in his Major League debut on September 26, 2018.  That outing saw Means surrender five earned runs, giving him an ugly 13.50 ERA heading into the 2019 campaign.

Means didn’t exactly force his way into the rotation during Spring Training, with only a 5.40 ERA over 13 1/3 frames of 2019 Grapefruit League action.  Still, the southpaw did manage 15 strikeouts against just four walks, and given the lack of other pitching options available in Baltimore, the O’s figured it was worth giving Means a shot.

The result was one of the only bright spots of a 108-loss season for the Orioles.  Over 27 outings and 147 1/3 innings as a starting pitcher, Means posted a 3.73 ERA, 3.09 K/BB rate, and 6.6 K/9.  The majority of that production came in the first half of the season, as Means carried a 2.50 ERA through his first 82 2/3 innings and ended up as Baltimore’s All-Star representative.

Means struggled to a 8.34 ERA in his first five post-break starts, though he did manage to get on track with a 3.26 ERA over his final 49 2/3 frames of his rookie season.  As a nod to his breakout performance, Means finished second in AL Rookie Of The Year voting, albeit a distant runner-up behind unanimous winner Yordan Alvarez.

Whenever (or if) the 2020 season gets underway, Means will stand as the de facto ace of the Orioles’ staff — an unlikely development given where he was slightly more than a year ago.  An 11th-round pick in the 2014 draft, Means moved through the farm system with unspectacular but solid numbers over his 622 2/3 minor league innings, posting a 3.83 ERA, 7.1 K/9, and 3.50 K/BB rate.  There isn’t much variance in Means’ year-to-year cumulative stats in the minors, or even in his MLB numbers in 2019.

That type of consistency gives the O’s some hope that Means can at least somewhat replicate his 2019 performance going forward, despite some of the red flags raised by advanced metrics.  Means’ ERA predictors weren’t impressive, with a FIP (4.41), xFIP (5.48), and SIERA (5.02) that were all markedly higher than his actual 3.60 ERA.  The lack of a high strikeout total hurts Means in this respect, and he also isn’t a hard thrower (average fastball velocity of 91.8 mph) or a ground-ball machine.

What he does offer is the ability to limit the damage when opposing batters do hit his offerings.  As per Statcast, Means finished in the 90th percentile of all pitchers in fewest hard-hit balls allowed, while also sitting comfortably above average (72nd percentile) in exit velocity.  Means also had only a 9.9% homer/fly ball rate last season, the fourth-lowest mark of any pitcher in baseball with at least 150 IP and a particularly useful skill for a hurler in the tough AL East.

Means’ heater isn’t particularly fast, though he does generate some good spin, as indicated by his spot in the 75th percentile of fastball spin rate.  His top pitch, however, is a changeup that Fangraphs ranked as one of the best in the league last season.  Only six pitchers with 150+ innings thrown had a better pitch value score on a changeup than Means’ +12.3 number.

Means just turned 27 yesterday and is under team control through the 2024 season (and not arbitration-eligible until the 2021-22 offseason), giving the O’s plenty of flexibility with his future.  Given the long rebuild ahead for the Orioles, it may be a reach to count on Means to still be a productive member of the rotation by the time Baltimore is next ready to contend, so the O’s could eventually consider him as a trade chip.

There wasn’t much buzz about Means on the rumor mill this past winter, as while Baltimore is still at the point of its rebuild that any trade option must be considered, the club might prefer to see what they have with the left-hander in his sophomore year.  A case could be made that the O’s should have sold high on Means given his lack of a track record, and yet even with some regression baked into his future numbers, the potential of Means being a solid innings-eater going forward carries a lot of value.  For a team with so little pitching depth on hand, an unheralded prospect blossoming into at least a decent MLB-level arm counts as a big success.

When Trusting The Decline Phase Goes Wrong: The Reds’ Decision To Trade Frank Robinson

By | at

Let’s begin this look back at perhaps the most famous (or infamous) age-related trade in baseball history with a simple point: the decline phase is real.  Both analytical data and just plain common sense dictates that players become less productive as they get older, and this logic has been the backbone of countless transactions over the decades.  We see several examples every year of teams being willing to invest in younger free agents, or being willing to give up more in a trade for a younger player (who, in most cases, also comes with more years of team control), while also being less willing to surrender trade assets or big free agent dollars for players in their 30’s, out of a fear that those players might quickly hit the wall.

So in this sense, Reds owner/GM Bill DeWitt wasn’t entirely off the mark by deciding to trade Frank Robinson to the Orioles for a three-player package back on December 9, 1965.  It’s always better to move a player a year too early than a year too late, and since Baltimore was willing to give up a promising 26-year-old right-hander in Milt Pappas as the headliner of the trade return, DeWitt felt it was a swap worth making.

Pappas was coming off an All-Star season in 1965, the second time the Detroit native had been named to the Midsummer Classic in a four-season span.  Despite his still-young age, Pappas was already a veteran of nine MLB seasons, with an impressive 3.24 ERA (113 ERA+) to show for his 1632 career innings.  He was the type of arm that seemingly promised an immediate rotation upgrade, and the inclusion of veteran righty reliever Jack Baldschun only made the deal more tempting for the Reds.  Cincinnati pitchers had a cumulative 3.88 ERA in 1965, ranking the Reds 16th out of the 20 Major League teams.

And thus, the O’s sent Pappas, Baldschun, and 21-year-old outfielder Dick Simpson to Cincinnati for Robinson.  It was a classic pitching-for-hitting type of swap that saw both teams deal from a surplus in order to address a need, and on paper, the trade made some sense.

On paper.

In practice, no discussion of baseball’s most lopsided deals is complete without mention of this trade, which ended up sparking a golden age of Orioles baseball.  The thing about baseball’s aging curve is that those who can defy it tend to defy it in a very big way — great players are defined, after all, by sustaining that greatness over an extended period of time.  Any player can have one big season or even several big seasons, but those who can keep that production up across the decades are the ones that truly stand out as all-time legends.

Case in point, Frank Robinson, who was a superstar from essentially day one.  Robinson won NL Rookie Of The Year honors in 1956 and also finished seventh in NL MVP voting in his first season, kicking off a dominant ten-year run in Cincinnati.  Over 1502 games and 6408 plate appearances from 1956-65, Robinson hit .303/.389/.554 with 324 home runs, making eight All-Star appearances and winning the NL MVP Award in 1961 (a year that saw the Reds win the NL pennant).

There wasn’t much evidence that Robinson was slowing down in 1965, though the slugger did turn 30 years old that August.  This detail is maybe the key factor in why this trade is so memorable over 54 years later.  Asked why he dealt one of baseball’s best hitters, DeWitt described Robinson as either “an old 30” or “not a young 30,” depending on the source.

Naturally, trading Frank Robinson for any reason wouldn’t have been a fond memory for Reds fans regardless of the specific details.  But DeWitt’s mention of Robinson’s age created an easy hook for both the media and maybe even for Robinson himself, who by all accounts was very motivated to prove that the Reds erred in trading him.

That motivation led to Robinson’s 1966 campaign, one of more wall-to-wall dominant seasons any player has ever enjoyed.  Robinson won the Triple Crown (49 homers, 122 RBI, .316 average) while also leading the AL in runs (122), OBP (.410) and slugging percentage (.637) for good measure.  He proceeded to post a 1.232 OPS in the World Series, leading to Series MVP honors as the Orioles won the first World Series championship in franchise history.  As you might expect, Robinson was named AL MVP, making him the first and still only player to ever win MVP honors in both the American and National Leagues.

Robinson hit .301/.401/.543 with 179 homers over his six seasons in Baltimore.  This was good for a 169 OPS+, which topped his 150 OPS+ during his previous decade in a Reds uniform.  The Orioles reached the World Series four times in Robinson’s six years on the roster, winning another championship in 1970.  Ultimately, Robinson didn’t start to slow down at the plate until 1976, his 21st and final season.

As any Reds fan can sadly recount, Cincinnati’s end of the trade didn’t work out nearly as well.  Baldschun and Simpson didn’t contribute much over two seasons with the Reds and both didn’t play in the majors after 1970.  While Pappas only posted a 4.04 ERA over 490 innings for the Reds before being dealt to the Braves in June 1968, it’s unfair to label him as a bust — it’s just that anything short of Cy Young-level performance would have paled in comparison to Robinson’s Orioles dominance.  Pappas went on to pitch eight more seasons in the big leagues, with a 3.57 ERA that represented only a relatively minor step back from his heyday in Baltimore.

The Reds struggled to a 76-84 record in 1966, and DeWitt both stepped down from the GM role and sold the club during the offseason.  Though DeWitt had a long career as an executive that included two pennant winners (the 1961 Reds and the 1944 St. Louis Browns — ironically, the franchise that would later become the Orioles), the Robinson trade is the move that DeWitt is most remembered for today, in large part because of his “not a young 30” quote.

The deal has become maybe the all-time cautionary tale for any team thinking about moving an aging but still-productive star.  Though there are far more examples of teams either correctly parting ways with a player before their eventual decline, or (by contrast) hanging onto a star player too long and watching him decline on their watch, no GM wants to be the one responsible for trading away a legend.  Father Time may not undefeated, as the saying goes, though Robinson put up as good of a battle against the aging curve as any just about any player in any sport.

Korea Baseball Organization Preparing To Begin Regular Season In Early May

By | at

APRIL 20, 10:00pm: The KBO’s Opening Day is set for May 5, Dan Kurtz of MyKBO.net tweets (Korean language link via Naver Sports). There will not be fans in attendance.

8:40am: Yoo details the abbreviated preseason at greater length in a second column, outlining the limited travel arrangement in place and the safety/testing precautions that the league will implement. Players will be tested twice prior to games, receive “strong” recommendations to wear masks throughout the stadium when not on the field and be prohibited from spitting (while being “discouraged” from celebratory high fives). Umpires will wear masks and gloves.

Players showing symptoms will immediately be quarantined and tested further. Their stadium would then be subject to a 48-hour closure. A positive test would result in a meeting with text executives throughout the league to determine whether a full stoppage of play is necessary.

April 19: An official announcement is expected Tuesday about the state of the KBO League’s schedule, Jee-ho Yoo of the Yonhap News Agency writes, as Korea’s top baseball league is preparing to begin play in early May.  League officials will meet with the presidents of each KBO team Tuesday, and it is still possible that the KBO could complete its usual 144-game schedule, with liberal use of double-headers and playing games on Monday (which is normally a league-wide off-day).

If a full season is played, the schedule would stretch into November, with postseason games in the latter half of the month played at a neutral venue — the domed Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul.  The KBO preseason is set to begin on Tuesday, with teams playing four games before beginning regular season action in the first week of May (possibly even on May 1 itself).  All preseason games and regular season games in at least the first portion of the schedule will be played without fans in attendance, and it is possible fans could be allowed to watch games in person later in the year depending on the status of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of course, all of the KBO League’s plans are dependent upon a continued decrease in coronavirus cases.  South Korea has showed good progress in this direction, as only eight new cases were reported in the country on Sunday, the lowest daily total in two months.  South Korea prime minister Chung Sye-kyun said today that general social distancing policies will remain in place until at least May 5, though “the degree of social distancing will be flexibly changed depending on the scope of transmissions.  The government will evaluate the risks every two weeks, and adjust the level of social distancing if necessary.”  In the meantime, some outdoor facilities, churches, restaurants, schools, and gyms could be allowed to open, assuming strict guidelines are followed for such public locations and gatherings.

Quick Hits: Warren, Yankees, ChiSox, Garland, Cubs

By | at

It was on this day back in 1890 that the Dodgers played their first game as members of the National League, as the team then known as the Brooklyn Bridegrooms dropped a 15-9 result to the Boston Beaneaters.  Brooklyn switched leagues after winning the American Association championship in 1889, and immediately continued their success against their new competition, posting an 86-43 record in 1890 to win the NL title.  This was the first of 23 NL pennants won by the Dodgers franchise, tied with the Giants for the most in league history.

Some notes from modern-day baseball…

  • Adam Warren headed into the free agent market after undergoing Tommy John surgery last September, so amidst all of that uncertainty, he “didn’t look anywhere else” once he received interest from the Yankees, the right-hander told George A. King III of the New York Post.  Having already pitched for the Yankees in two separate stints earlier in his career, Warren said the Bronx Bombers “were my ideal team….It was a situation where I didn’t have that much bargaining power and I wanted to catch on with a team that would take a chance on me.  I was very fortunate the Yankees wanted to do that.”  Warren signed a two-year minor league contract with New York, with the expectation being that he would spend the 2020 season recovering from surgery and be ready to pitch in 2021.  If a reworked 2020 schedule leads to games deep into October or November, Warren admitted that “kind of tempts me to come back quicker, but the timing of the surgery it would feel like I am rushing back.  The most realistic goal is treat this as a gone year.”  The recovery process seems to be going rather smoothly for Warren, who said “fortunately I haven’t missed a beat too much with my rehab” even while being limited to working out at his home.
  • The Jose Quintana-for-Eloy Jimenez (and Dylan Cease) trade may not be a fond memory for Cubs fans, though an even more lopsided deal between Chicago’s two teams took place back in 1998.  The Athletic’s James Fegan looks back at what he described as the best trade in at least the modern era of White Sox history, when the Sox acquired Jon Garland from the Cubs in July 1998 for right-handed reliever Matt Karchner.  The Cubs wanted some bullpen help for their playoff drive, and picked up Karchner even though he was in the midst of struggles that lasted both before and after the trade.  Karchner pitched two more injury-plagued years and was out of baseball after the 2000 season, while Garland went on to become a mainstay of the White Sox rotation.  Garland averaged 179 innings per season from 2000-07, and played a major role for the Southsiders’ World Series-winning team in 2005.

2019-20 Offseason In Review Series

By | at

Over the last two months, MLBTR has continued its annual Offseason In Review series, looking at what all 30 teams did or didn’t do this winter.  Though this offseason has unfortunately continued on longer than anyone could have imagined, we’ll still publish an entry for every team, gauging how their transactions have set them up for the 2020 season.

Here is the updated list of teams covered to date:

AL West

AL Central

AL East

NL West

NL Central

NL East

Angels GM Billy Eppler Discusses Wheeler, Simmons, Ohtani, Canning

By | at

Angels general manager Billy Eppler took part in an online Q&A session with fans on Friday, addressing many topics about his team.  Here are some of the highlights, with Eppler’s answers compiled by Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register…

  • The Angels were linked to Zack Wheeler’s market over the winter, and Eppler filled in some details about the team’s interest, saying “we pursued Wheeler pretty aggressively.”  That pursuit included a cross-country trip in November for Eppler, manager Joe Maddon, and team president John Carpino to meet with Wheeler in person.  Despite this courtship, Wheeler ended up signing with the Phillies, though the Halos may have faced an uphill battle to sign the right-hander for geographical reasons, as Wheeler wanted to stay on the East Coast and in closer proximity to his wife’s family in New Jersey.  Other suitors such as the Twins and White Sox also seemingly fell short of Wheeler’s services for the same reason, as Chicago’s offer was reportedly worth more than the $118MM Wheeler received from Philadelphia.
  • Fletcher reported in February that the Angels had yet to begin extension talks with Andrelton Simmons, and Eppler confirmed that the club hadn’t held any negotiations with Simmons and his agents prior to the league shutdown.  As per the GM, there had only been “internal discussions” within the front office at the start of Spring Training about a possible new deal for the defensive wizard.  Simmons is set to become a free agent in the 2020-21 offseason, and the shortstop would still be eligible for the open market even if the COVID-19 pandemic wipes out the entire 2020 season.  Of course, the league-wide transactions freeze also covers extension negotiations, so the Angels and other teams can’t talk contracts with any players during the shutdown.
  • Shohei Ohtani threw two bullpen sessions this week, Eppler revealed, including a 15-pitch session on Friday that consisted of only fastballs.  Ohtani continues to progress in his recovery from Tommy John surgery and should be ready to pitch when and if the season does get underway.  The two-way star was originally slated to return to the mound in mid-May, though since games surely won’t resume by that point, Ohtani likely won’t end up missing any time in the Los Angeles rotation.
  • Eppler also provided an update on Griffin Canning, saying that the young righty should start throwing off a mound within 7-10 days.  “His throwing program is back to 120 to 150 feet this week, at about 70 to 80 percent intensity,” Eppler said.  Canning was sidelined early in Spring Training due to elbow problems, including what the club described at the time as “chronic changes to the UCL and acute joint irritation.”  While there was much speculation that Canning would need Tommy John surgery, Canning instead received a platelet-rich plasma injection, as Eppler said that “surgery wasn’t recommended in Griffin’s case…ultimately the different physicians we had him see didn’t recommend it.”  The prospect of the season being canceled doesn’t have any bearing on whether Canning would eventually undergo a Tommy John procedure, as Eppler said “we would not proactively subject him to that surgery unless there was new evidence or a new injury that took place.”

Transaction Retrospection: The Rocky Colavito/Harvey Kuenn Blockbuster

By | at

Pop quiz, who were the AL and NL batting champions last season?

If you didn’t immediately have the names of Tim Anderson (.335) and Christian Yelich (.329) at the tip of your tongue, don’t worry.  Given how modern statistics have lessened the importance of batting average in recent years, the batting title doesn’t carry nearly as much prestige in 2019 as it did for much of baseball’s history.  One could even make the case that the home run crown lost some its luster last year since so many players were suddenly clearing the fences — a record 6776 homers were hit during the 2019 season, with Pete Alonso (53) and Jorge Soler (48) leading the way in their respective leagues.

All this being said, you can imagine the furor that would have been generated this offseason if a Yelich-for-Alonso deal had been arranged between the Brewers and Mets, or if the White Sox and Royals decided to swap Soler and Anderson in a one-for-one deal.  Ultimately, any straight-up trade of star players is going to generate headlines, though the idea of a “home run champ for batting champ” trade makes for just as intriguing a concept today as it did 60 years ago yesterday, when the Indians dealt Rocky Colavito to the Tigers for Harvey Kuenn.

Both players were All-Stars in 1959, with Colavito finishing fourth in AL MVP voting and Kuenn in eighth place.  Colavito’s 42 home runs tied Harmon Killebrew for the American League lead, as “The Rock” managed to top his 41-homer performance from a season earlier.  Over four full seasons with the Tribe, Colavito has already hit 129 home runs and slashed .271/.364/.533 over 2166 plate appearances, making him an instant superstar to the Cleveland faithful.

However, Colavito hit “only” .257 in 1959, which led Indians GM Frank Lane to balk at Colavito’s demand for a raise for the 1960 season.  For younger fans used to today’s guaranteed contracts and arbitration structure, players in 1960 had to negotiate their salaries on a year-to-year basis, and since teams had total control over player movement due to the reserve clause, even some of the game’s biggest stars had little leverage in salary negotiations.  In fact, there was also some dispute between Kuenn and the Tigers in the batting champ’s own contract talks heading into the 1960 season.

Though Colavito and the Indians ultimately worked out a deal for 1960, Lane (known as “Trader Frank” for completing over 400 swaps during his two decades as a GM for five different teams) jumped at the opportunity to move the slugger for a player Lane felt was a better all-around talent.  While Kuenn’s reputation has been somewhat diminished by his decline after this trade, it should be noted that he was a very good ballplayer in his prime.  From 1953-59, Kuenn hit .314/.360/.426 with 53 home runs, while leading the league in hits four times, doubles three times, and once in batting average thanks to his career-best .353 mark in 1959.

As steady as Kuenn was, however, 1959 was by far his best offensive year, and it was still only somewhat better (141 OPS+, 145 wRC+) than Colavito’s production (133 OPS+, 130 wRC+) that same season.  Kuenn was also almost three years older than Colavito, and of course didn’t have Colavito’s folk hero status in Cleveland.  Indians fans were instantly enraged by the trade, while Lane was confident that he had made a shrewd move.  In an infamous quote that has gone down in Tribe lore, Lane told reporters that dealing Colavito for Kuenn was like trading hamburger for steak.

In 1960, it seemed like the Indians may have at least broken even on the deal.  Kuenn hit .308/.379/.416 over 537 PA, good for a 118 OPS+ and wRC+ through modern analytical eyes.  Colavito, meanwhile, far outpaced Kuenn in the power department by hitting 35 homers and collecting 87 RBI over 616 PA, but also batted .249/.317/.474 (107 wRC+, 108 OPS+) in his first season in Detroit.

It didn’t take long for Trader Frank to lose interest in Kuenn, however, as Kuenn was traded to the Giants in the 1960-61 offseason for left-hander Johnny Antonelli and outfielder Willie Kirkland.  Antonelli’s MLB career ended after the 1961 season, while Kirkland put up some decent power numbers along with a low average (ironically, making him something of the version of Colavito that Lane feared Colavito would become).  Kuenn played six more years in the big leagues and had a couple more productive seasons, though he never again approached his 1959 peak.

As for Colavito, he rebounded from his 1960 down year to become one of the game’s most fearsome bats of the 1960’s, hitting .266/.362/.470 with 210 home runs from 1961-68 despite playing in a notoriously pitcher-friendly era.  This included a second stint in Cleveland in 1965-67, as the Indians (with Lane no longer in the organization) reacquired Colavito for a return visit.

Cleveland fans may already be cringing at any recollection of “The Curse Of Rocky Colavito,” which was the title of a 1994 book by longtime Cleveland sportswriter Terry Pluto.  After dealing Colavito, the Indians didn’t reach the postseason again until the 1995 season, and the club had only six winning seasons between 1960-1993.  The Colavito trade was hardly the only reason for the Indians’ long slide, of course, and it arguably wasn’t even the starting point of the team’s downfall — nor was it even the most damaging trade the Indians made with the Tigers that same week.  Just five days prior to the Colavito deal, Cleveland sent Norm Cash to Detroit for infielder Steve Demeter, who went on to appear in just four games for the Tribe and never again played in the majors after the 1960 season.  Cash, meanwhile, proceeded to rip up American League pitching for the next 15 years in a Tigers uniform.

Still, the Cash trade never seemed to loom as large in the minds of Tribe supporters, perhaps since Cash never actually played a game in a Cleveland uniform.  (The Indians acquired Cash from the White Sox as part of a seven-player deal that saw Minnie Minoso head back to Chicago earlier in the 1959-60 offseason.)  Colavito had already become a fan favorite at the time of the deal, and continued to remain a presence in Cleveland for years afterwards, both in his return stint as a player and then as a coach and broadcaster for the Indians.

Trading one star player for another was as relatively unusual in 1960 and it would be today, though in some ways, the story of Colavito-for-Kuenn has a lot of parallels to modern-day front office moves.  Money was naturally a factor, as both Colavito and Kuenn were coming off rather contentious contract negotiations, and it seemed as though Lane had misgivings about continuing to pay top dollar for what he felt was a power-only type of ballplayer.

In today’s game, you might see a front office just non-tender an arbitration-eligible slugger rather than work out a trade — just ask Chris Carter or C.J. Cron.  Likewise, many a current GM would undoubtedly prefer more of a well-rounded hitter than a power-only type, though of course Lane was far off the mark both in evaluating Colavito as a one-dimensional hitter, and in betting that Kuenn would continue his 1959 form.

Losing Colavito was a tough beat for Indians fans, though since the Tribe have been regular postseason participants since Pluto’s book was published, maybe the “curse” is technically no more.  Of course, Cleveland also hasn’t won a World Series since 1948 (the longest streak of any team in baseball), so maybe the baseball gods have more of an issue with the Tribe than just the Colavito deal.  Maybe fate simply prefers hamburger to steak.

Rob Wooten Announces Retirement

By | at

Right-hander Rob Wooten announced his retirement (Twitter links) today, ending a career that spanned 12 professional seasons.  Wooten will remain involved in the game, as the 34-year-old will “transition into a new role” with the Reds after pitching in Cincinnati’s system for the past three years.

Originally a 13th-round pick for the Brewers in the 2008 draft, all 71 of Wooten’s career Major League games came in a Milwaukee uniform, as he posted a 5.03 ERA, 2.41 K/BB rate, and 7.0 K/9 over 68 innings (all out of the bullpen) from 2013-15.  Wooten lacked the big fastball usually possessed by most relievers, instead relying on a cutter-heavy arsenal that limited hard contact.  As evidenced by ERA predictors like FIP (3.22), xFIP (3.90), and SIERA (3.62) over his career, Wooten’s 5.03 ERA was perhaps not indicative of his actual performance, though his overall numbers were inflated by allowing eight runs in his six MLB innings during the 2015 season.

After spending 2016 with the Braves’ Triple-A affiliate, Wooten began his Cincinnati tenure, though he was greatly limited by injuries over his three seasons in the Reds’ organization.  Over his entire career, Wooten posted a 3.88 ERA, 4.00 K/BB rate, and 9.00 K/9 over 501 2/3 minor league frames.

We at MLB Trade Rumors wish Wooten all the best in the next phase of his baseball career.

MLB Trade Rumors is not affiliated with Major League Baseball, MLB or MLB.com

Do not Sell or Share My Personal Information

hide arrows scroll to top