2014 Winter Meetings, Pt. 2
All of these trade discussions manage to invoke "corruption" in some form
December 11th was the final and biggest day of the Winter Meetings. With the Rule 5 Draft taking place later that day, teams were going to be subjected to all sorts of roster movement. And since this was the last day of the Meetings, several transactions that had been rumored all week were formally confirmed today. Let’s get started with one of the year’s most jam-packed days.
December 11, 2014
Philadelphia 76ers receive: Andrei Kirilenko, Jorge Gutierrez, 2020 2nd-round pick (#47, subsequently traded, Yam Madar selected), 2018 2nd-round pick (#38, Khyri Thomas selected), cash
WHAT? What is this doing here?
Brooklyn Nets receive: Brandon Davies, 2018 2nd-round pick (#55, subsequently traded, Arnoldas Kulboka selected)
Why are the Philadelphia 76ers at the MLB Winter Meetings????? Was Sam Hinkie’s nose sensitive enough to pick up the smell of players being traded for future value in San Diego all the way from Philadelphia? We don’t have time for this!
The last NBA trade we talked about involved the 76ers. I’m nearly certain that we’ve talked more Philadelphia 76ers than any other sports team from the year 2014. There is one basic story arc to all of these trades (the 76ers acquired future value by doubling down on being bad in the present) and we’re running out of ways to tell it. There are only so many ways to describe an overpaid veteran being sent to Philadelphia in exchange for potential value, especially when that potential never became actual value.
None of these 2nd-round picks went on to have meaningful NBA careers and we can safely ignore all of them. The three actual NBA players each merit discussion, even if they generally stopped being NBA players after this trade. Andrei Kirilenko is the natural place to begin. Kirilenko was born in the Soviet Union and started playing organized basketball around the time that it stopped being the Soviet Union and resumed being Russia. He was taken with the 24th pick of the 1999 Draft, becoming the youngest foreign player and first Russian to be selected in the first round. It’s not really surprising that the first big-time draft prospect from Russia would get a nickname like “AK-47,” though it’s hard to argue with the logic in this particular case. Not only are the “Andrei Kirilenko” initials obvious and not only did he lean into it by wearing number 47 throughout his career, he also hails from the city of Izhvesk, the long-time manufacturing home of Russian weaponry, including the AK-47. It would’ve been ridiculous for him to have any other nickname.
Kirilenko started his NBA career with the Utah Jazz in 2001 and quickly made a name for himself on the court as a tenacious defender. He made the All-Star team in his third season in the league and received Defensive Player of the Year votes in each of the next five seasons. Kirilenko signed a massive contract extension that kicked in for the 2005-06 season, but a shift in his role left him unhappy. In 2007, Kirilenko gave a Russian interview where he publicly expressed his desire to abandon the remaining $63 million on his Jazz contract in order to go back to playing in Russia. Eventually, these feelings were smoothed over, and Kirilenko remained with the Jazz for long enough to make that $63 million. But when the 2011 NBA lockout delayed the start of the season, Kirilenko returned to CSKA Moscow and casually won EuroLeague MVP rather than returning to the NBA when the season resumed.
After that excursion, Kirilenko returned to the NBA on a contract with the Timberwolves that paid him about $10 million for 2012-13, with a player option for 2013-14 at a slightly higher figure. He opted out after a solid season and was reportedly seeking a three-year, $24 million contract — less money per year, but a higher guarantee for someone in the later stages of his basketball career. It was therefore more than a little surprising when Kirilenko instead signed with the Nets on a two-year contract worth $3.1 million per year. The move attracted particular attention given that it transpired under the reign of Nets (and CSKA Moscow) owner Mikhail Prokhorov, a fellow Russian and longtime colleague who had given Kirilenko his start in professional basketball and already shown a willingness to spend beyond what was reasonable in order to compete.
On one hand, Kirilenko was already prepared to walk away from significant sums of money in 2007 (or at least talk about doing so publicly), so maybe it’s not surprising that he was willing to take a haircut in 2013 in order to play for an owner with whom he already had a relationship on a team expected to compete. “I’m not sure if 10 years ago I would have taken this,” Kirilenko said on a conference call, “but right now, it’s really the best option possible – to take a legit chance to win the trophy.” On the other hand, he was answering that question in response to widespread rumors that this $3.1 million figure was a sham; that he and his oligarchic pal had worked out an under-the-table arrangement to circumvent salary cap rules for a team that was already paying heavy penalties. Kirilenko led up to that quote with “I guess it comes from the history because of the Russian KGB. It makes it a little funny. What can I do?” These weren’t just cheap shots from social media comics, there were formal complaints from owners that resulted in an NBA probe into the signing. The Nets were cleared of any wrongdoing, which must have been a relief for the friends and family of whatever NBA employee was personally charged with conducting the investigation.
Nothing really went well for the Nets in 2013-14, with Andrei Kirilenko having a particularly bad time of it. He missed the first game of the season with back spasms, played limited minutes in the next four, and then missed 25 consecutive games. By the time he returned to action, it was New Year’s Eve and an already crowded roster had squeezed Kirilenko out of playing time. He was unhappy with his role and unhappy with Jason Kidd, but opted in to the second year of his contract in hopes that things would be better after Kidd’s departure to Milwaukee. They weren’t better and were probably worse – Kirilenko went on leave from the Nets in November after playing seven games and going a cumulative 0-for-5 on field goals. Everyone knew that it was over as soon as Brooklyn could find a place to send him.
Let’s cover the other players and the minor intrigues they each bring to the table. Jorge Gutierrez was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, but attended high school in Colorado before transferring to Findlay Prep for his junior and senior year. Gutierrez played basketball at Cal and embarked on his professional basketball career in 2012. When he debuted in the NBA on March 9, 2014, he became the fourth person born in Mexico to ever play in the NBA. He’s still the most recent to do so. This concludes the minor intrigue of Jorge Gutierrez.
Brandon Davies was raised in Provo, Utah, and played basketball for his hometown Brigham Young University starting in 2009. The Cougars had not been great at basketball for much of Davies’ life, but the recently-arrived Jimmer Fredette was elevating BYU to heights not seen in generations. Fredette returned for his senior year as one of college basketball’s brightest talents, and the now-sophomore Davies played a key role on the team. The Cougars were ranked #24 in the preseason polls and were ranked as high as #3 in the February 28, 2011 edition of the polls. But then, disaster struck when Brandon Davies was kicked off the team on March 1 for violating university rules. The school would not confirm what Davies had done to end his time with the team, only that it was “not criminal,” though it was eventually reported as premarital sex in violation of the school’s strict honor code. The Cougars lost their next game, were defeated in the Mountain West Conference tournament, and bounced from the Sweet Sixteen, all comparative disappointments caused by the absence of Davies, who continued to sit on a bench in a suit and tie while fans chanted “We Love Brandon” (that chant doesn’t work quite the same in 2024 as it did in 2011).
It’s hard to overstate the ways in which this controversy must have been awful for Brandon Davies to live through. You’re on a BYU team with more attention than any BYU team in recent memory due to their electric scorer and plausible national championship expectations. You get suspended for something that is very clearly against university rules. The team is still pretty good without you by the school’s typical standards (this was BYU’s first and only Sweet Sixteen appearance since 1981), but comes up short of the reasonable goals that were set while you were involved. Meanwhile, because you were suspended for an activity that a substantial number of non-BYU participants in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament probably engaged in during the 2010-11 season (if not during the actual tournament), there were several rounds of sports media discourse about your violation and why it actually merits a suspension. Anyone defending you is either implicitly or explicitly taking shots at your deeply-held religious beliefs. You are “extremely remorseful, heartbroken” about the situation, but it keeps getting renewed rounds of attention. Even now, thirteen years later. Should we stop talking about it?
Davies was eventually reinstated to the BYU basketball team and played his final two collegiate seasons before joining the 76ers as an undrafted free agent in 2013. He was one of the few holdovers returning to the roster for the 2014-15 season, so obviously they had to take this opportunity to get rid of him for 2nd-round picks in the distant future. Davies played in seven games in Brooklyn before he was waived on January 6 (a date that also feels different in 2024 than it did in 2015). Jorge Gutierrez was waived even sooner than that, receiving his release on December 12. That left Andrei Kirilenko and the 2nd-round picks, who were the main attractions all along. People couldn’t believe that picks from the 2020 draft were already being traded. That was so far in the future! The player who would be selected with that pick was still in middle school!
Ten years later, that one-time middle schooler (Israeli guard Yam Madar, taken 47th overall by the Celtics after a series of trades) is already described as “forgotten” after a season where he averaged 4.6 points, 2.1 assists, and 1.2 rebounds in the EuroLeague. He is roughly as likely to play in an NBA game this year as you are (assuming that you aren’t an NBA player and won’t become one anytime soon). The future will be over before we know it.
There’s still an Andrei Kirilenko saga to resolve, too. Why did this have to happen on December 11? Obviously, nobody expected Kirilenko to actually play for the 76ers, with most observers expecting him to be waived like other 2014 Philadelphia trade acquisitions. Reportedly, all parties came to an agreement ahead of the trade that a release would take place, but the 76ers didn’t see it that way. They had hoped to play Kirilenko, rebuild his value, and trade him at the deadline for another future draft pick – not an unreasonable theory for a player on a deal once considered cheap enough to launch a league investigation, but one that was said to violate a gentleman’s agreement and infuriate Kirilenko and Prokhorov.
Given that every participant in this saga had been targeted as some sort of persona non grata league-wide, there were plenty of axes to grind and reason to doubt the contradictory reports, but that didn’t stop most people from taking one side or the other, usually based on preexisting fandom. The 76ers raised the stakes when they suspended Kirilenko without pay on January 9th for failing to report to the team. But Kirilenko won the war of attrition. He continued to sit until the trade deadline passed and Philadelphia waived him with no further opportunity to get a trade return. No NBA team was interested in playing him down the stretch, but Kirilenko never really needed the NBA. He returned to CSKA Moscow for one last dance before retirement, winning a domestic title and placing third in the EuroLeague.
Alright, that was sudden but let’s transport our minds back to the San Diego Bayfront Hilton in 2014. We’ll gradually raise the temperature before rushing back into the flames of the hot stove.
December 11, 2014
Chicago White Sox receive: Dan Jennings
Miami Marlins receive: Andre Rienzo
In 2002, Dan Jennings was hired as the Vice President of Player Personnel for the Florida Marlins. Jennings was previously scouting director for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays after working as a scout since the 1980s, which itself followed a college baseball career at Southern Mississippi and William Carey University. Jennings was promoted to assistant general manager after the 2007 season.
In the ninth round of the 2008 Draft, Dan Jennings and the Marlins selected Dan Jennings. This isn’t a nepotism situation; these two Dan Jennings aren’t related to each other. But it simply must be some sort of implicit bias situation, right? People are known to discriminate based on names when making hiring decisions. When you’re looking at 100 different videos of 100 different college pitchers striking a guy out and one of them has the same name as you, aren’t you inevitably more likely to see their potential in the rosiest terms? It’s hard to design a study to test this specific theory (participants would get freaked out after the third or fourth applicant had their exact name), but why wouldn’t it hold true? Every team without somebody named Dan Jennings in their front office was willing to pass on Dan Jennings until Dan Jennings took the plunge in the ninth round – shouldn’t that count as evidence of something?
You can’t really argue with the results in this case. Jennings was quickly converted to the bullpen and found success in the role, though some of that might have been the performance-enhancing drug use for which he served a suspension in 2010. He made his MLB debut in 2012 and was met with unsustainable success, with a 1.89 ERA that his 5.67 FIP suggested was something of a mirage. Over the next couple of seasons, he was one of a number of sneaky-good relievers on quite bad Marlins teams as they tore down in the aftermath of an ill-fated building attempt. It’s easy to see the Marlins’ logic if they were animated by a desire to convert their surplus luxury of an effective reliever into something with a more solid foundation on a team that was gearing up to compete despite plenty of holes.
That’s really not what Andre Rienzo brought to the table, though. Rienzo was the first MLB pitcher born in Brazil, which was cool, and he made a handful of good starts in his 2013 rookie season. But he was substantially worse in 2014, getting pushed into the bullpen after making it through eleven starts with a 5.86 ERA. Rienzo was younger than Jennings and could theoretically be described as a starting pitcher, but it wasn’t clear how this move would make the Marlins better in 2015.
It didn’t. Rienzo was called up midway through the 2015 season, made 14 unhelpful relief appearances, and never pitched in MLB again. Dan Jennings had a couple of effective seasons in Chicago, then was traded to the Rays at the 2017 trade deadline – an unexciting victory for the White Sox, but one that cannot be seriously disputed. The other Dan Jennings had a weird pivot in 2015, when the Marlins fired existing manager Mike Redmond and pulled Jennings out of the front office to take over in the dugout. The next two sentences are lifted directly from his Wikipedia page and are perfect enough that no writer should try to improve upon them in conveying this information:
The move was widely considered unorthodox in that Jennings had no coaching experience above the high school level decades earlier and had no professional playing experience. It was described in Business Insider as “shocking,” in Sports Illustrated as “weird,” on Grantland as “utterly baffling” and in USA Today as “bizarre” and optically “problematic” for the troubled Marlins front office.
It’s not even clear that the architect of those sentences needed to read the articles they’re citing; the words they’re quoting are generally used in the headlines of these pieces. The Marlins went 55-69 with Dan Jennings in charge and, despite earlier statements from team officials that he’d return to his general manager position after the season, he was fired instead.
Also December 11, 2014
Miami Marlins receive: Mat Latos
Cincinnati Reds receive: Anthony DeSclafani and Chad Wallach
Just in case you feel bad for Dan Jennings, let’s clarify by way of example that he oversaw his fair share of disastrous transactions while serving as general manager.
Because of the way that I’ve ordered these transactions (and the fact that we don’t tend to focus on contract signings), we’ve skipped over something of a sea change in Miami. After repeated instances of miserdom, the Marlins shocked baseball when they awarded the richest contract in sports history to their homegrown superstar Giancarlo Stanton. The 13-year, $325 million contract had most of the baseball industry thinking the team had gone crazy, but also represented an unmistakable and expensive demonstration of intent. The Marlins were hoping to make moves at the Winter Meetings that set them up to win in 2015 and identified a target in the form of South Florida’s own Mat Latos.
Latos was actually born in Alexandria, Virginia (the first personality red flag), but attended Coconut Creek High School in Broward County, Florida. Coconut Creek is not the same caliber of baseball powerhouse as other schools in the region, most of which had tried to recruit a 14-year-old Latos, so the freshman showed up well aware of his status as the most talented player on the team. Unsurprisingly, his personality suffered as a result. Latos would yell at teammates who made errors during games and was disrespectful to teachers, with his coaches making him run more “than anybody else has in a high school career,” in Latos’s estimation. The stats were undeniable – Latos had a 0.64 ERA in his senior year and 368 strikeouts across 260.1 high school innings – and the talent suggested that Latos could be a top-ten draft pick, but even if people at Coconut Grove weren’t directly telling pro scouts about Latos’s difficult tendencies, the scouts were surely drawing their own conclusions from him screaming at his infielders or throwing baseballs at opposing coaches. Instead of being selected at a spot commensurate with his pitching ability, the Padres took Latos in the 11th round of the 2006 Draft.
Rather than sign for anything close to the value of an 11th-rounder, Latos held out for the $3 million he might’ve made as a top ten draft pick and spent a year pitching for Broward College when the Padres wouldn’t give it to him. He continued to pitch well, which was never really in any question, but also developed a sufficient scintilla of maturity for the Padres to feel comfortable awarding him a $1.25 million signing bonus on the eve of the next draft. Latos officially began his professional career in 2007 and was in the majors by 2009, but this was less a story of “character transformation” and more a story of “getting it over the line.” After throwing his first 50 innings in 2009, Latos was excellent as a 22-year-old in 2010. On September 7 of that year, a 1-run, 10-strikeout performance brought Latos’s season ERA down to 2.21, but seemed to use the last bit of gas he had in the tank after throwing more than double the number of innings as he had in 2009. He ended the season with a much-worse but still-great 2.92 ERA, finishing 8th in Cy Young voting.
Latos took a slight step back during the 2011 season, but was still an above-average pitcher at 23 years old. That offseason, the Padres sent their young ace to Cincinnati in exchange for a package of four players: Yonder Alonso, Brad Boxberger, Yasmani Grandal, and Edinson Volquez. Teams don’t usually trade away young aces, and when they do their fans aren’t happy about it, but Padres fans were able to be excited after reflecting on Latos’s on-mound immaturity. But in general, he continued to perform well enough for fans to brush past his “hothead” behavior and instead focus on things like his cat named Cat Latos. This continued in Cincinnati as Latos pitched like the platonic ideal of a #2 starter for a couple of years.
Things had taken a turn in 2014. The Reds, who had won at least 90 games in Latos’s first two years in Cincinnati, suddenly started losing. Latos had preseason surgeries on his elbow and then on his knee, which prevented him from pitching until June. It’s not accurate to say that he was “healthy” by June, since Latos clearly never achieved full health in 2014. His strikeout rate declined as he failed to reach the same velocity on his pitches. When the Reds considered moving Latos at the July trade deadline, it was something of a shock that it would even be a conversation. But as the Reds entered the offseason with a losing record and with four pitchers set to hit free agency after the 2015 season, some form of pitcher trade began to feel inevitable.
Neither Anthony DeSclafani nor Chad Wallach were huge prospects, which fans of all teams made known as they ripped Reds GM Walt Jocketty for selling Mat Latos at such a cut-rate value. DeSclafani was higher-ranked and had already debuted in MLB. His surface results didn’t look great so far, but the 5 walks he allowed in 33 innings highlighted the impeccable control that had become his calling card on his ascent through the minors and had typically come with more impressive all-around results. The Marlins had drafted Wallach in 2013, and uneven results that year were followed by a smashing season in the low minors in 2014. But Wallach was old for the level (only a few years younger than Latos) and it was too early to tell what his MLB future would look like. Both guys were probably going to be major leaguers (one already was), but it was hard to imagine either reaching the heights of Mat Latos.
Chad Wallach didn’t do much with the Reds, making his 6-game debut in 2017 and recording one hit before being placed on waivers. But Cincinnati did quite well in the swap of pitchers. DeSclafani immediately joined the Reds’ rotation in Latos’ place and made 31 starts. The “quality start” is a somewhat arbitrary metric that measures starts of at least six innings with under three earned runs allowed. 17 of DeSclafani’s 31 starts in 2015 met the “quality start” threshold, which at least tells us that he could usually be counted on to keep the Reds in a position where victory was possible. DeSclafani was never the most exciting pitcher, but remained a steady member of the Cincinnati rotation except for when he missed the entire 2017 season and parts of two others with elbow problems, which I suppose is a large caveat. His 7.3 WAR as a Red is nothing to sneeze at. DeSclafani joined the Giants as a free agent after the 2020 season, then got traded twice in 2024 during a year where he was recovering from flexor tendon surgery.
Mat Latos, meanwhile, made 9 quality starts in 2015, and only 8 of those were as a Marlin. We should back up, because Mat Latos made a terrible first impression in Miami, and we should actually back up beyond that to some of the other bad first impressions that were made. First, the Marlins kicked off their relationship with a new pitcher by going to an arbitration hearing because Latos wanted $10.4 million and the Marlins only wanted to pay him $9.4 million. The Marlins won the hearing, but not before they had repeatedly insulted their new pitcher to his face by arguing that he wasn’t worth $10.4 million. “You see it as a business,” Latos said of the process, “you kind of see how much of a pawn you really are.” Then, during spring training, Latos had “90 cubic centimers of fluid drained from [his surgically repaired left] knee,” which sounds like a lot more excess fluid than the left knee is supposed to have.
When the season rolled around, Latos finally got to make that terrible first impression in Miami by getting annihilated in his first start, allowing seven runs and recording just two outs to start the year with a 94.50 ERA. Latos ended up going on the injured list at the end of May and returned in June with a stretch of good starts that were indicative of a guy trying to pitch his way to a new home. He was shipped to the Dodgers as part of a 13-player trade that we’ll talk about in July, but was released in September after his effectiveness diminished. Latos was worth -0.4 WAR in his MLB career following this trade – the Reds picked the right time to sell. The Marlins might not have picked the wrong time to buy, but definitely picked the wrong player.
Beginning in 2018, Latos transitioned to the independent leagues and started working as a relief pitcher, both of which feel incredibly well-suited to his vibe. He played for the New Jersey Jackals of the Can-Am league in his first independent season, and it’s hard to decide whether his best highlight was getting ejected for starting a brawl or getting an inexplicable start at first base, where he went 3-for-4 with two doubles. He would go on to pitch for the South Maryland Blue Crabs and tally 74 saves in three seasons, which feels like it has to be something close to the all-time record for an Atlantic League team that’s only existed since 2006. He stopped pitching after 2022, but began working as the bench coach for the Blue Crabs this season.
In a weird book-end to our Dan Jennings’ saga, Chad Wallach’s father Tim was named the bench coach for the Marlins on the staff of new manager Don Mattingly, who took over when Jennings was fired. This also can’t be a nepotism situation, obviously – Chad was drafted by the Marlins in 2013 and traded away in 2014, while Tim didn’t take over until after the 2015 season.
Wait, hold on. Hmmmm. After Chad Wallach’s six-game stint with the Reds in 2017, the Marlins selected him off waivers, reuniting father as bench coach and son as backup catcher. Mediocre backup catchers are generally seen as replaceable, and Wallach’s gametime corroborates that evaluation, with no more than 23 games played in any of the four seasons he spent in Miami. On the other hand, those four seasons lasted four seasons! Well, one was 2020, so those four seasons lasted like 3.3 seasons, but Chad Wallach managed to stick around on the roster that whole time. He had 13 cumulative extra-base hits. Surely, this is textbook nepotism, right? The coach’s kid gets to hold down a job he doesn’t deserve for FOUR years?
Nope, that’s not quite right either. Tim Wallach actually resigned halfway through Chad’s time with the Marlins, citing a desire to, and I promise you I’m not making this up, “spend more time with his family in California.” I hope Chad didn’t take that too personally, but if he did, he took matters into his own hands. Chad’s next stop after leaving Miami was with the Los Angeles Angels, reuniting the entire family in California. Chad has spent the last three seasons in the Angels organization despite limited MLB time, so it seems to be a “cool guy who teams like” situation rather than any instance of corruption.
This concludes a startling 0/3 result on allegations of impropriety in this post. Mikhail Prokhorov clearly didn’t “underpay” Andrei Kirilenko, since Kirilenko ended up being salary dumped to Philadelphia. Dan Jennings wasn’t solely responsible for the MLB career of Dan Jennings, since Dan Jennings’ career as a pitcher lasted longer than Dan Jennings’ career as a decision maker. And Chad Wallach continues to get fringe-of-MLB jobs long after his dad has retired. Isn’t it nice to know that the world is sometimes more boring than it seems?