Jason Heyward for Shelby Miller + Andrew Friedman's First Move
Also Ty Kelly for Sam Gaviglio, which does not merit title inclusion.
November 17, 2014
St. Louis Cardinals receive: Jason Heyward, Jordan Walden
Atlanta Braves receive: Shelby Miller, Tyrell Jenkins
The 2007 Braves were still replete with the superstars known and loved by Atlanta, doing the things fans had come to expect. 35-year-old third baseman Chipper Jones was the centerpiece on the hitting side, while a 40-year-old John Smoltz finished 6th in Cy Young voting in his 19th season with the team. Andruw Jones had just turned 30 and forgotten how to hit, but had not yet given up completely on being an athlete and won a Gold Glove in centerfield. The 2007 Braves even had Julio Franco, who was 49 years old when he knocked an RBI single for the final hit of his MLB career, which dated back to April of 1982.
The Braves selected Jason Heyward from an Atlanta-area high school in the first round of the MLB draft that year, and although he made it to the majors on an accelerated timeline, the team’s identity had already shifted by the time he got there in 2010. Smoltz and Franco had retired, while Andruw Jones had already been released by two teams to kick off his horrid post-Atlanta career. Chipper Jones was still around, but had slowed with age to become merely a great hitter rather than among the elite. That year, the first baseman job was filled by weird transitional veterans who you don’t remember as part of the Braves, like Troy Glaus and Derrek Lee.
Any vacuum of star power that existed in Atlanta was quickly filled by the 20-year-old Heyward, who arrived as the top prospect in all of baseball and opening day right fielder for the Braves. He hit a three-run home run in his first MLB at-bat, driving the ball into the right field stands and sending Turner Field into a frenzy. Heyward was an All-Star that year and finished a narrow second in Rookie of the Year voting behind Buster Posey while establishing himself as the new best player on the Braves. At the end of the season, the Braves decided to fill their hole at first base by calling up the player they selected one round after Heyward, another 20-year-old named Freddie Freeman.
Over the next few seasons, Heyward, Freeman, and electric young closer Craig Kimbrel (along with a bunch of other temporarily exciting young pitchers, all of whom broke down horribly) formed the core of one of the best and most frustrating non-playoff teams in baseball. The 2011 Braves missed the playoffs at 89-73, losing their last five games of the season to finish one spot behind the eventual-champion Cardinals in the NL Wild Card race. The 2012 Braves improved to 94-68 and would have made the playoffs as the wild card, but a newly-instituted expansion to the playoffs meant that they had to play a one-game playoff against the team who finished second. Instead of coasting into the playoffs, the Braves had to play an elimination game against the Cardinals in what would’ve been a rematch from the year before. They lost 6-3 in a game where St. Louis left two runners on base compared to Atlanta’s 12. In 2013, the Braves finished 96-66 and finally made it over the hump to win the NL East and return to the playoffs. They won a single game before being eliminated by the Dodgers in the NLDS, with Atlanta blowing a lead in the decisive Game 4 while an unused Craig Kimbrel watched from the bullpen.
As the calendar turned to 2014, the Braves were in a tricky predicament as their three young stars entered arbitration. As a “trial-and-file” team, the Braves had taken a position against further negotiating and were prepared to go to contentious arbitration proceedings with the players who comprised their competitive core. As the Braves prepared to controversially move to a new ballpark in Cobb County, they hoped to retain the team’s stars to keep fans as engaged as possible. In Heyward’s case, the Braves took a loophole by continuing to negotiate a multi-year deal, eventually agreeing to a two-year contract for 2014 and 2015 that locked in Heyward’s salaries for the remainder of his arbitration years. While that may have looked like a show of faith, the impact was lessened by Atlanta’s contemporaneous extension of Freeman on an eight-year, $135 million contract. Later that month, the Braves gave Kimbrel a four-year contract for $42 million just after extending Julio Teheran for six years and $32 million. Suddenly, the term of Heyward’s contract looked conspicuously short, and he seemed to be the player that the team was prepared to let test free agency after the 2015 season.
It’s hard to blame them. Heyward had yet to return to the offensive heights of his rookie season and had missed substantial time with injury in 2013. He was young and talented enough that it was easy to imagine Heyward receiving a monster contract on the free agent market, but still carried enough risk that it was difficult to get comfortable with guaranteeing that money well in advance. He hadn’t made an All-Star team since his rookie year. The 2014 season made things even less tenable, as Heyward stayed healthy and won his second Gold Glove while still posting offensive production below his rookie year standards. Meanwhile, the Braves had regressed to 79-83 and shaken up their front office in hopes of better results. Winning a Gold Glove triggered a bonus that increased Heyward’s 2015 salary, which would further strain an already record-high Braves payroll. In general terms, the Braves seemed poised to swap an outfielder and maybe a reliever for help in their starting rotation.
It just wasn’t clear that it was going to happen so quickly or dramatically. Heyward was sent to a St. Louis club that was poised to compete, having played in the last four National League Championship Series. He went along with Jordan Walden, an early-career closer for the Angels who had been traded to the Braves ahead of the 2013 season. Walden had pitched ahead of Kimbrel as a late-inning reliever for the past two years, buttressed by his weird pitching motion in which he sort of hopped on the rubber in a manner later mimicked by Carter Capps. Walden was set to be a free agent after the 2016 season, and the Cardinals signed him to an extension that locked in salaries for the next two seasons shortly after his arrival.
The big piece returning to Atlanta was Shelby Miller, a pitcher who burst onto the scene as a dominant reliever late in the 2012 season and then pitched to a 3.06 ERA in 31 starts during his age-22 season. Miller’s results were worse in 2014, particularly during a rough stretch in July and August, but a strong September rebuilt confidence that Miller could be an effective pitcher for the long-haul. He had just turned 24 years old and would still make a league minimum salary in 2015, with team control lasting through the 2018 season. For a Braves team that still wanted to compete, even if they didn’t think they’d be able to do so as effecitvely next year, Miller was the perfect fit. They also snagged Tyrell Jenkins, a recent 50th overall pick who had just had a strong showing in the Arizona Fall League after the start to his season was delayed while he recovered from shoulder surgery
Fans of the Atlanta Braves loved Jason Heyward and were not in the mood to hear about Tyrell Jenkins’ strong showing in the Arizona Fall League. Braves fans excoriated the team social media account in their replies to the trade announcement even though, in the reckoning of Dave Cameron at Fangraphs, this was “the kind of move that seemingly makes a lot of sense for both sides.” Both sides swapped uncertainty, with St. Louis now uncertain as to how long they could keep Heyward around and Atlanta uncertain what sort of performance they could expect from their new pitchers, but even the worst-case scenarios for either team were better than what they had before.
In an alternate reality, the New York Yankees accepted the Braves’ offer of Heyward (along with a host of other veterans, most of whom will be discussed here in the coming weeks as they get shipped off in alternate deals) for a package of prospects headlined by Aaron Judge and Luis Severino. Not this reality, though.
It was a bit of a “good news / bad news” situation for both of St. Louis’s acquisitions. Walden got off to a great start as a Cardinal, making 12 appearances in April and only allowing a run once. But Walden was diagnosed with a shoulder strain and placed on the injured list after that, which initially had a six week timeline for recovery. The recovery never quite happened, and Walden ultimately never pitched again after multiple years spent trying to return to health. Heyward stayed healthy and had a near-peak offensive season as the best player on a Cardinals team that finished 100-62 in a brutally difficult NL Central (hard to imagine). But the more important streak of playoff dominance came to an end in calamitous fashion, as the Cardinals were eliminated in the NLDS by the hated-rival Cubs despite Heyward’s excellent offensive performance in the series.
Tyrell Jenkins threw 52 ineffective MLB innings in 2016, making his acquisition something of a bust for Atlanta, but Shelby Miller put together one of the more interesting legacies for any player on any baseball team. On the mound, Miller was excellent, throwing 205.1 innings with a 3.02 ERA as he made the first and thus far only All-Star team of his career. Unfortunately, this came on a Braves team that finished 67-95 and wasn’t going to provide a lot of run support. Still, Miller got off to a 3-0 start, fell to 3-1 while allowing two runs in seven innings, and then picked up wins four and five by throwing complete game shutouts to avoid any doubt. Miller was 5-1 with a 1.33 ERA on May 17 and seemed like he was well on his way to a breakout year.
Miller fell to 5-2 inauspiciously, allowing just one run through seven innings in a game that Atlanta lost 7-0 (there was no bottom of the ninth; the other two pitchers allowed their six runs in just one inning). He repeated that general line (seven innings, one run) twice in the month of June, picking up a no-decision each time. By the end of the month, Miller was 5-4 with a 2.20 ERA, a pedestrian record in comparison to that level of run suppression. He made five starts in July, two of which were poor, one of which was great, and two of which were excellent, finishing that month with an 0-4 record to fall to 5-8 with a 2.44 ERA. In August, Miller made six starts and went at least seven innings with under two runs allowed in three of them. Two of those were no-decisions; Miller lost all four of the other starts that month to fall to 5-12 with a 2.56 ERA. The streak of starts without a win was now a Braves-record 19 straight, with Miller allowing 2 runs or fewer in 12 of those non-wins.
Through some combination of demoralization or leaning into it for comedic effect, Miller had a rough September that included his three worst starts of the season by game score. If the Braves weren’t going to support Miller when he was pitching well, they sure weren’t going to help while he was pitching poorly, and Miller lost his first five starts of the month. He had ended August with a 5-12 record and a 2.56 ERA, but now had a 5-17 record with a 3.15 ERA. The new ERA represented substantially worse performance, but was still laughably out of place next to that horrible record. Finally, on October 4, everything came together. Miller’s former St. Louis Cardinals came into town for their final series of the season having just clinched the NL Central title over a Pirates and Cubs team that each won more than 95 games. After Saturday’s game was rained out, the two teams played a doubleheader Sunday before the Cardinals could go off to the playoffs and the Braves could go off to the golf course. Shelby Miller had gone 24 starts without winning a game (3.83 ERA in that span) and this was his last chance to end the streak before it haunted him all offseason.
By game score, this was Miller’s best start of the season besides the two shutouts. He threw eight shutout innings in this one, striking out seven batters while allowing just six baserunners (none of whom made it past second base). The Braves managed to score more than zero runs and Shelby Miller got the win, finishing the year 6-17 with a 3.02 ERA and an active one-game winning streak. After that season, he would be traded in a deal so legendary that it somehow overshadows this absurd winless streak as the most notable part of Shelby Miller’s Atlanta legacy. More on that next year.
Jason Heyward left a similarly complicated transactional legacy in St. Louis. The two sides were never able to find common ground on an extension, and Heyward entered free agency as a coveted young talent with expectations of a 10-year, $200 million contract that could fit with nearly any large-market team. At the end of November, rumored suitors included the Angels, Cardinals, Dodgers, Orioles, Yankees, Red Sox, White Sox, Cubs, Phillies, Mariners, and Giants (in roughly that order). As Heyward came closer to a decision, it became evident that the competition was between the Cardinals and the Cubs. In the end, the Cardinals offered the most total money, but Heyward opted to sign with the Cubs on an eight-year, $184 million contract. If leaving for a huge contract with the hated rivals wasn’t bad enough, Heyward ruffled further feathers when he cited the more compelling Cubs’ young core as a reason for his decision. “You have Yadier [Molina], who is going to be done in two years maybe. You have Matt Holliday, who is probably going to be done soon. I felt like if I was going to look up in three years and see a completely different team, that would kind of be difficult,” Heyward said.
The analysis of this contract gets destroyed by the Cubs breaking their 108-year World Series drought in 2016 and Jason Heyward’s intangible leadership being credited as one of the key factors. Let’s put aside the 2016 World Series, or at least acknowledge that Heyward’s terrible on-field contributions tended to decrease the probability of the team winning that year, so that we can cleanly recognize this as one of the most disastrous contracts in baseball history. Heyward added two more Gold Gloves in his first two seasons in Chicago, but his bat immediately fell off a cliff as he regressed to one of the worst regular hitters in the league. There were two years in the eight years of Heyward’s contract where he was an above-average hitter. The first was in the pandemic-shortened 2020, where he played 50 games. The second was in 2023, while Heyward was playing on a part-time basis for the Dodgers after the Cubs released him rather than keeping him on the roster for the final year. During the other full seasons of the Heyward Era, the Cubs paid him top-of-the-market money to be a below-average MLB hitter. He never made an All-Star team after that rookie season.
According to Baseball-Reference, the Cubs paid Jason Heyward $183,280,000 to produce 8.9 WAR for their team. The Cardinals paid him $8,300,000 to produce 6.9 WAR for their team, which seems like a better value.
November 20, 2014
St. Louis Cardinals receive: Ty Kelly
Seattle Mariners receive: Sam Gaviglio
We’ve allocated most of our space today to discussing the Heyward/Miller trade, which is a rational decision that I stand behind. It’s equally clear that a proper allocation limits discussion of the Ty Kelly - Sam Gaviglio swap to a single-digit number of sentences, including the two that have been wasted on meta-discussion thus far.
Ty Kelly was drafted by the Orioles in 2009 and then sent to Seattle in the summer of 2013 in exchange for Eric Thames, while Sam Gaviglio was a 2011 draft pick by the Cardinals. Neither had appeared in MLB yet, though they would go on to make their debuts and have undistinguished careers during the latter half of the 2010s. Ty Kelly had a moderate level of Twitter popularity that outpaced his limited and generally pinch-hitting on-field contributions, but Sam Gaviglio was able to establish himself more firmly into a team’s regular season plans, most evidenced by making 24 starts for the 2018 Blue Jays. According to Baseball-Reference, their nicknames are the similarly non-creative “T.K.” and “Sammy G” – see if you can guess which one belongs to which player!
Both Kelly and Gaviglio played their final MLB games shortly after their 30th birthdays and both are wearing Dodgers hats in their official headshots despite never appearing for the team. I honestly don’t think we should even bother using the ninth sentence budgeted for discussion of this trade.
(Also November 20, 2014)
Los Angeles Dodgers receive: Adam Liberatore, Joel Peralta
Tampa Bay Rays receive: Greg Harris, Jose Dominguez
In our last post, we discussed moves made by newly-hired front office decision makers and neglected to mention one of the more obvious tropes of the genre. Fortunately (and by design, because I have a calendar), we have an opportunity to discuss the concept here.
Andrew Friedman played baseball at Tulane, but picked up injuries that left him better positioned to succeed in his classes at the business school. He worked for Bear Stearns before joining a private equity firm and meeting recent Rays purchaser Stu Sternberg. Sternberg hired Friedman to work for the team in 2004 while his ownership was still partial, then promoted him to general manager after the 2005 season once he had full control. Friedman was only 28 years old and was the second general manager in team history, following the 518-775 tenure of initial GM Chuck LaMar.
Friedman quickly made a name for himself as he led the Rays’ transition from the most pathetic franchise in baseball to one of its most respected. Despite never spending on the scale of the rest of MLB, including fellow AL East juggernauts like the Yankees and Red Sox, the Rays had been consistently competitive and had a nearly-unparalleled reputation for savviness. For the Dodgers, hoping to revitalize their organization under powerful new ownership, there was no more compelling target to lead the front office. The Dodgers created a position of President of Baseball Operations in order to hire the 37-year-old Friedman with a promotion, and he accepted the job shortly after the 2014 season. The combination of a talented front office executive accustomed to a shoestring budget with the endless resources of the Dodgers was a horrifying concept, even if it could easily mean that the Dodgers were just trying to maintain their recent run of success while taking a step back in spending.
In analogous business situations like this, it would not be unusual to see Rays employees leave to the Dodgers in the aftermath. Whether because good relationships with Friedman led them to want to continue working together or because Friedman saw particular potential in someone that made them valuable to the new organization, there would be an exodus of employees in some size. This might’ve happened with some front office employees whose names we don’t know, but the move is naturally difficult to pull off with players because of the contractual obligations involved. Evan Longoria couldn’t just tear up his Rays contract to sign a new one with the Dodgers; the two sides would need to get on the phone and work out compensation.
That negotiation has to be a little bit strained, or at least awkward. If your old boss calls you up and he names particular players that he’d like to trade for, why would you let him have them? You’ve just taken over baseball decisionmaking in your own right and don’t want to start off your career getting ripped off by the person you used to report to. And since the entire remaining organization still has the fingerprints of the old boss’s influence, the two sides probably have similar priorities when it comes to player evaluation, making it difficult to find swaps that both sides believe improves their situation. The easiest thing to do, from the Rays’ perspective, is to just not answer the phone if Andrew Friedman calls. The only way to ensure he can get his foot in the door is by offering something that the Rays really need and asking for something that they really don’t want.
In this case, the thing the Rays need is money, or at least salary relief, and Friedman hoped to identify relief pitchers who they didn’t want. This is the third straight post where the Rays have traded away a solid pitcher who was slated to earn a couple millions of dollars in 2015 as part of their quest to squeeze payroll from a turnip. Today’s departure was reliever Joel Peralta, a Ray since 2011 who signed a new contract with the team when he became a free agent in 2012. He made $3 million in each of the first two seasons and was slated to make $2.5 million in 2015 with a club option for the 2016 season, amounts of money that are modest enough in the perspective of MLB salaries that teams typically don’t question whether a player is “worth” that amount. But the Rays did, and Peralta probably wasn’t, with his 2014 season grading out as roughly replacement level. Along with Peralta, the Rays sent over Adam Liberatore, a left-handed reliever who the Rays drafted in the 21st round back in 2010. Despite reaching AAA as early as 2012 and posting consistently strong minor league numbers, the Rays hadn’t given the 27-year-old Liberatore a chance in the majors yet, making him a reasonable enough request for the departed Friedman to make.
In exchange for the pitchers born in 1976 and 1987, the Dodgers sent Tampa Bay pitchers born in 1990 and 1994. The elder pitcher was Jose Dominguez, an electric reliever with closer potential who made brief appearances for the Dodgers at the end of the 2013 and 2014 seasons. His minor league career included suspensions for both performance-enhancing and recreational drug use. The 1994 pitcher was Greg Harris, Los Angeles’s 17th-round pick in the 2013 draft. Greg Harris is not to be confused with his father Greg Harris a 15-year MLB vet who was often referred to as Greg A. Harris to avoid being mixed up with his contemporary Greg (W.) Harris. Greg A. Harris Jr. had the most uncertainty in his profile at the time of the trade and I like to think that the difference in opinions that really made this swap possible was over Harris’s potential. Friedman had no role in the drafting of Harris and was willing to let him go, while the Rays front office that he left behind believed that Harris could be a diamond in the rough.
Greg Harris Jr. never made it to the majors and only made it to AAA for one start, so if that was in fact the rationale for the trade then the Rays lost this one. If their goal was just to dump Peralta’s $2.5 million then they did so successfully, missing out on just 29 replacement-level innings in an injury-marred season before the Dodgers declined his club option at the end of the year. But the Dodgers undeniably came out ahead in the swap of Jose Dominguez for Adam Liberatore. Dominguez appeared in four games for the Rays before he was released after the season, although he made it through those four appearances without allowing a run. Liberatore appeared 39 times for Los Angeles in 2015, then 79 more times over the next three seasons, performing as an above-average reliever throughout. He was released after the 2018 season and then never pitched again.
As time passed, any raw emotions about Friedman’s departure abated. With all of Friedman’s direct reports subsequently hired away to become executives of their own baseball franchises, but the same DNA remaining with the Rays, Los Angeles and Tampa Bay have become fairly frequent trade partners over the last ten years. We will see a number of swaps between the Dodgers and Rays going forward, but it’s hard to think of many that will be less consequential than this.