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This Date In Transactions History: January 30

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Let’s take a look back at some notable moves taking place on this day in years past…

  • 2021: The Blue Jays officially announced their one-year, $18MM deal with Marcus Semien, as the two sides agreed to the contract a few days prior.  In the aftermath of a disappointing 2020 season with the A’s, Semien opted for the one-year pact with Toronto in order to rebuild his free agent value with a better performance in 2021.  This plan worked to perfection, as Semien finished third in AL MVP voting after hitting .265/.334/.538 with 45 home runs (a new single-season record for a second baseman).  Semien then cashed in during his most recent trip to the open market, signing a seven-year, $175MM contract with the Rangers signed prior to the lockout.
  • 2021: In another notable move completed one year ago, the Athletics acquired Cole Irvin from the Phillies in exchange for cash considerations.  Irvin hadn’t done much over 45 1/3 career innings with Philadelphia, but the southpaw emerged as a valuable member of Oakland’s rotation last year, posting a 4.24 ERA over 178 1/3 innings.  While the Statcast metrics weren’t kind to Irvin and questions remain as to whether or not he can stick as a reliable starting pitcher, and yet for the cost of just a minor cash outlay, the trade was already a win for the A’s.  It is possible Irvin wouldn’t have broken out without a change of scenery, and yet the deal doesn’t look great in hindsight for the Phillies, especially considering the Phils spent much of the season looking for consistency at the back of their rotation.
  • 2016: Jean Segura was traded for the second of four times in his career, as the Diamondbacks acquired Segura and right-hander Tyler Wagner from the Brewers for a package of Chase Anderson, Isan Diaz, Aaron Hill, and $5.5MM to cover part of Hill’s remaining salary.  Segura’s lone season in Arizona was the best of his career (.319/.368/.499 with 20 homers as part of a 5.0 fWAR campaign), but it wasn’t enough to keep the D’Backs from a 93-loss season.  With Mike Hazen taking over as Arizona’s GM in the aftermath of that rough season, Segura found himself on the move again in November 2016, traded to the Mariners in another notable swap that brought Ketel Marte to the desert.  From Milwaukee’s perspective, their Segura trade ended up being a nice win.  Anderson became a solid member of the rotation for four seasons, while Diaz was part of the prospect package the Brewers sent to the Marlins to land Christian Yelich.
  • 2006: Hey, remember when Mike Piazza played for the Padres?  The Hall-of-Famer spent only one season in a Friars uniform, but it was a memorable one, sparked when Piazza signed a one-year, $2MM deal (with an $8MM mutual option for 2007).  Getting the bulk of playing time as San Diego’s starting catcher, Piazza still plenty left in the tank at age 37, hitting .283/.342/.501 with 22 home runs over 439 PA.  Piazza’s big year helped the Padres win the NL West, but the team declined their end of the mutual option after the season.
  • 1954: Bobby Thomson’s legendary home run helped THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT in 1951, but it can be argued that trading Thomson helped the Giants win the World Series in 1954.  On this day 68 years ago, the then-New York Giants picked up left-handers Johnny Antonelli and Don Liddle, backup catcher Ebba St. Claire, infielder Billy Klaus and $50K in cash from the then-Milwaukee Braves in exchange for Thomson and catcher Sam Calderone.  Antonelli became a fixture of the Giants rotation for the next seven seasons, reaching six All-Star games and posting a league-best 2.30 ERA in 1954.  Liddle was also a solid arm for New York in 1954, and might be best remembered for allowing the long Vic Wertz fly ball that required Willie Mays to make “The Catch” in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series.  Brought into the game specifically to face Wertz, Liddle was removed after facing his one batter — according to legend, Liddle then wisecracked “well, I got my man” in mock-bragging fashion after leaving the game.
  • 1923: It’s not quite the most famous example of the Red Sox trading a future Hall-of-Famer to the Yankees, since it’s not like Boston fans bemoaned “The Curse Of Herb Pennock.”  Still, the Yankees never won a World Series before Pennock came to the Bronx, dealt from Boston for $50K and three players who were all gone from the Sox roster by 1925.  Pennock was already a 10-year veteran with a solid career behind him at the time of the trade, but after a couple of relative down years in 1921 and 1922, the Sox were ready to move on.  Pennock went on to pitch 11 seasons with the Yankees, posting a 3.54 ERA over 2203 1/3 innings and helping New York win four Series championships.  The southpaw was at his best in October, with a 1.95 ERA over 55 1/3 career innings in World Series play.

Ken Griffey Jr., Mike Piazza Elected To Hall Of Fame

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Cooperstown’s 2016 induction class has been decided, as Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza have been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers Association of America.

In his first year of eligibility, Griffey received a whopping 99.3% of the vote (437 of 440 ballots), surpassing Tom Seaver’s previous record of 98.84% (425 of 430) when the former Mets ace was inducted in 1992.  Piazza appeared on 365 ballots for a comfortable 83% total that easily surpassed the 75% threshold for induction, though the star catcher has had to wait a bit longer to get his Cooperstown due.  This was Piazza’s fourth year of eligibility, a wait that is generally attributed to a crowded ballot in recent years and, more scurrilously, unsubstantiated rumors that Piazza may have used PEDs during his playing career.

It’s fair to say that baseball fans and pundits have seen Griffey’s induction coming for three decades.  “Junior” was the first overall pick of the 1987 amateur draft and he quickly lived up to the talent promised by his high school superstardom and impressive family pedigree.  Griffey broke into the majors at age 19 and almost immediately developed into one of the game’s best players, winning his first Gold Glove (of 10 in his career) and making his first All-Star appearance (of 13) in 1990.

In his prime years with the Mariners, Griffey brought a combination of power and elite center field defense not seen since Willie Mays.  His obvious talent, youth and media-friendly persona made Griffey into quite possibly the “face of baseball” throughout the 1990’s — an entire generation of fans grew up not just watching Griffey on the field, but also playing his name-branded video games and seeing him in commercials and TV guest appearances.

Griffey finished with a .284/.370/.538 slash line over 11304 plate appearances with the Mariners, Reds and White Sox.  He’s one of the eight members of the 600-Homer club, and his 630 home runs ranks him sixth on the all-time list.  While these amazing numbers were already enough to make him a surefire Hall-of-Famer, it’s also worth noting that Griffey may have been even better had he not battled some significant injuries later in his career, particularly during his tenure with Cincinnati.

Griffey becomes the first player drafted first overall to reach the Hall of Fame, which makes it ironic that he’ll enter alongside Piazza, the most famous late-round star in MLB amateur draft history.  Piazza was so lightly regarded as a prospect that he was a 62nd-round pick for the Dodgers in 1988, only selected at all since Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda did a favor to Piazza’s father, a personal friend.

From that humble start, Piazza blossomed into arguably the best-hitting catcher in baseball history.  Piazza’s 396 home runs as a catcher is a record for the position, and over his entire career, Piazza totaled 427 homers and a .308/.377/.545 slash line over 16 seasons largely spent with the Dodgers and Mets.  Piazza’s list of achievements include 12 All-Star appearances, 10 Silver Slugger Awards and the 1993 NL Rookie of the Year.

Falling a bit shy of enshrinement were Jeff Bagwell (71.6%), Tim Raines (69.8%) and Trevor Hoffman (67.3%). Full voting results can be viewed at the BBWAA’s website.

Dennis Gilbert Reflects On His Career As Top Agent

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Scott Boras may have the most impressive client list of any agent in baseball today, but it wasn’t long ago that he shared that title with Dennis Gilbert.  From the early 80s until his retirement in 1999, Gilbert was in charge of negotiations for some of the biggest names in the game, from George Brett to Jose Canseco to Barry Bonds.  He built a reputation for getting top dollar for his players and churned out record-smashing deals for his top clients.  Ultimately, however, Gilbert sold his powerful Beverly Hills Sports Council at a young age, then got back into the game a couple years later as a special assistant to White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf.

Throughout his career, there’s been one constant for Gilbert: the life insurance business.  When a friend of his who worked as a baseball agent passed away unexpectedly, Gilbert took over for some of his clients and quickly built his business from there.  Still, he never left the insurance industry and juggled both by surrounding himself with the right people in both worlds.  It was an impressive feat, given the amount of attention and hours that being a baseball agent requires.

In 1993, Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated wrote a tremendous piece comparing Boras and Gilbert when they were both at the top of the business.  The consensus from around the game was that the two men achieved their success quite differently.  “One guy’s a salesman, and the other’s a warrior,” Reinsdorf told Verducci. “Dennis is smooth. While he’s taking your money, he makes you very happy.”

It may be a cliche, but Gilbert is one of a kind.  He still greets people with warmth and a few card tricks, and he tends to make lasting impressions.  There was no one in his field in the 1980s or ’90s who had a comparable demeanor, and there’s no one now either, nearly 15 years after he transitioned out of the business.

“I don’t have a ton of interaction with agents on a daily basis, but I don’t think any of them do.  My approach was unique and I built some strong relationships during that time,” Gilbert tells MLBTR.

Gilbert had a strong rapport with executives around the league, but he had more than one client who rubbed folks the wrong way.  Canseco was viewed as a brash and arrogant; Bonds’ rep was as a standoffish individual who didn’t care for the media.  Of course, the stain of steroids didn’t help either player’s image.  To hear Gilbert tell it, most people didn’t have a full idea of what either man was about and chose only to zero in on the more odious aspects of their personalities.

“The part of Jose that I know about was when he had money he gave his money to his father, mother, sister, brother and a lot of friends around him and he just took care of a lot of people.  He had a very big heart and I think that’s a part that people never saw,” Gilbert says.  “Barry did a lot of things under the radar also. Going to children’s hospitals, signing dozens of bats every year and handing them out and doing a lot of things that people weren’t cognizant of.  They both had soft sides to them.”

Gilbert’s relationships with certain people in baseball continued even after he sold off the BHSC.  He was Mike Piazza’s agent during much of his Dodgers prime, and even though Gilbert was no longer representing the catcher towards the end of his stay there, he was “in the room” around the time when Piazza was traded to the Marlins.  Once again, in Gilbert’s mind, public perception didn’t quite match reality.  As most Dodgers fans understand it, the new FOX ownership group was reluctant to pay the All-Star catcher fair market value on his next contract, necessitating the trade to Florida.  On the contrary, Gilbert says that Rupert Murdoch’s baseball arm did everything it could to make things work.

Today, he’s on call for “anything that Jerry Reinsdorf needs” in his role with the White Sox and says that he’s optimistic that the club will have a quick turnaround after a down 2013.  He’s considered team ownership, with exploratory talks to purchase the Rangers and, most recently, the Dodgers.  One might think that he’s wistful for his days as one of the very top agents in the game, but that’s not exactly the case.  Gilbert says that he enjoyed negotiating the contracts and “the baseball part” but isn’t wild about some of the outside stuff the job also calls for.  His future could take him in a number of directions, but it’s safe to say that he won’t be sitting opposite of Reinsdorf at the negotiating table again.

This Date In Transactions History: Mike Piazza

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8020049 Mike Piazza With the amateur draft coming up in just over three weeks, we've spent most of our time here at MLBTR covering the first round. Quality players come from every round though, and there's perhaps no more famous example of a late-round pick turning into gold than Mike Piazza. The Dodgers selected him in the 62nd round of the 1988 draft as a favor to Tommy Lasorda, who was a friend of the Piazza family and godfather to Mike's brother Tommy.

Piazza moved from first base to catcher in the minor leagues at Lasorda's behest, and he hit his way to the big leagues less than four years later. After a brief cup of coffee in 1992, Piazza opened the 1993 season as the Dodgers' starting catcher, and hit a robust .318/.370/.561 with 35 homers as a 24-year-old. He won the Rookie of the Year award unanimously, and finished ninth in the MVP voting.

Over the next four seasons, Piazza hit .342/.409/.590 with an average of 33 homers per year, being named to the All-Star team and winning the Silver Slugger Award each year. He never finished lower than sixth in the MVP voting during that time, finishing as the runner up in 1996 (Ken Caminiti) and 1997 (Larry Walker). Piazza was a star of the first order, but contractual issues began to surface.

Scheduled to become a free agent after the 1998 season, talks about a contract extension between Piazza and the Dodgers went nowhere. Furthermore, Peter O'Malley and Terry Seidler were in the process of selling the team to FOX. Afraid that they were going to lose their star to free agency and not have anything to show for it, Los Angeles took a drastic step.

Thirteen years ago today, the Marlins and Dodgers pulled off a seven-player swap that sent Piazza and Todd Zeile to Florida in exchange for Gary Sheffield, Charles Johnson, Bobby Bonilla, Jim Eisenreich, and Manuel Barrios. To say the trade wasn't well-received in Southern California would be an understatement.

Piazza's time with the Marlins as short lived, very short lived in fact. He had five hits in five games with them before being traded to the Mets for Preston Wilson, Ed Yarnall, and Geoff Goetz. Piazza spent parts of eight years with the Mets before moving to the Padres and Athletics late in his career. He retired as a .308/.377/.545 career hitter with 427 home runs to his credit, unquestionably the best hitting catcher in baseball history (min. 1,000 games caught).

We see players traded right before reached free agency every season, but it's not often a player of Piazza's caliber is involved, and he was traded twice in one week.

Photo courtesy of Icon SMI.

New York Notes: Mets, Piazza, Yankees, Aceves

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Eight years ago today, the Yankees signed Ramon Ramirez to a minor league contract after winning his rights via the posting system with a $350K bid. Ramirez, then 21, had been with the Hiroshima Carp, appearing in just two games with them from 2002-2003.

Here's some links from the Big Apple…

  • Bud Selig briefly spoke to SI.com's Jon Heyman (Twitter link) about the Mets' ownership and dire financial situation. "We're in unchartered waters. I talk to Fred (a lot), we just have to hope it works out," said the commissioner. The team is said to be seeking another loan on top of the $100MM it's already been granted by the league.
  • Mike Piazza is helping coach Team Italy this spring, and he told ESPN New York's Adam Rubin and Newsday's David Lennon that he would like to own a team someday, but not necessarily the Mets (Twitter links). When asked if he's been contacted by anyone about owning a club, Piazza replied "I can't confirm or deny."
  • Yankees GM Brian Cashman told Peter Abraham of The Boston Globe that he doesn't believe he'll be able to acquire a starter before the Opening Day, and perhaps not until June. "Normally anything of quality doesn't become available until after the June draft," said Cashman. "That's why you try and get as much as you can get accomplished in the winter. I know New York doesn't handle patience very well. But I'm from Kentucky, so it's a little easier for me to deal with."
  • Cashman also spoke to Abraham about why the Yankees non-tendered Alfredo Aceves, who eventually signed with the Red Sox. "I offered him a minor league contract, that was it. I wasn't going to do anything more than that," said the GM. "Because of the back issue, we could not give him [a Major League contract]. He was throwing off the mound for us and he always hit a wall. So we ultimately continued to fail throughout the entire process to get him off the DL and active. He had a lot of success for a period of time, but then ultimately we'd had to take steps back and we'd have to shut him down and re-do the treatment."

Odds and Ends: Pokey, Lowe, Boss

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Before you fire up the grill, check out these links.

Baseball Blogs Weigh In: Johnson, Bonds, Piazza

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So far during the 2008 regular season, 28 players have either been DFA’d or released. At the same point last year, that list only included 14 players. In the past four seasons, only 2006 (22) had more than 14 players DFA’d or released this early in the season.

This will be an interesting trend to watch the rest of this season and into the early portion of 2009. It appears to be an indication that teams are showing less patience to work trades for fringe players or teams may be placing higher premiums on prospects, unwilling to move even mid-level prospects for a guy that might be the 24th or 25th man on a 25-man roster. Either way, it could mean fewer trades in 2008 and beyond.

The list of players DFA’d so far this year includes some that have been productive Major Leaguers at some point in their career and could be again, including Kirk Saarloos, Juan Castro, Dan Johnson and Hideo Nomo. OK, maybe Nomo is a stretch. With players like this being made available it is even more reason for teams to avoid trades and wait. And of course Barry Bonds and Mike Piazza are still sitting out there. Let’s take a look at what is being said about these players in the Blogosphere…

  • Mets Fever wonders if Johnson is worth a flyer from the Mets but wonders who would go to make room.
  • Fanhouse sees Johnson ending up right back where he started (almost), signing with the Giants.
  • Beyond the Boxscore wrote this prior to Frank Thomas signing with the A’s, but the question, "Who Needs a DH?" is still relevant with Piazza, Bonds and Johnson. They take a look at several teams that could be in the market.
  • I am convinced that by the All-Star break, we will have seen 30 different versions of "Why [insert MLB team] should sign Barry Bonds". The latest comes from Jays Nest who argues for the Blue Jays signing the all-time home run king.

Cork Gaines writes for Rays Index and can be reached here.

Gammons’ Latest: Crisp, Piazza, Wells

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ESPN’s Peter Gammons has a new blog post up.

  • Peter Angelos might put the kibosh on any Brian Roberts trade.
  • The Red Sox apparently wouldn’t mind shipping Coco Crisp to the Cubs for Sean Gallagher and another prospect.  The Sox might hope Crisp is the Cubs’ backup plan to Roberts. 
  • Gammons says Tommy Lasorda suggested the Dodgers consider Mike Piazza as a backup catcher; they are not interested.  It would’ve been fun to see Piazza finish his career in L.A.
  • Another free agent, David Wells, "hasn’t gotten a sniff from any team."  It’s only April 23rd, so desperation hasn’t quite sunk in. 

Reds Interested In Piazza?

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WEDNESDAY: Hal McCoy ran this one by Dusty, who implied that he hasn’t had any discussions about Piazza specifically.  Meanwhile Fay says the Reds have "mild interest" in his latest article.

TUESDAY: This morning, Mark Healey of Gotham Baseball wrote that Reds manager Dusty Baker expected his team to sign free agent catcher Mike Piazza.  Reds beat writer John Fay checked in on the rumor, and it he didn’t get a denial.  Whether or not Piazza is the target, the Reds are looking for catching help and/or a right-handed bench bat.

Piazza, 39, hit .275/.313/.414 in 83 games last year.  He earned $8.5MM from the A’s and didn’t catch at all.  A shoulder injury knocked him out for much of the season, and he cleared waivers in August.  The A’s offered him arbitration after the season, which he declined.  They stand to snag a supplemental draft pick if he signs with the Reds.  This winter we heard rumblings about retirement, the Rays, or even Japan for Piazza.

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