T10YL - 2014 MLB Trade Deadline, Part 6
The final two trades of the 2014 Trade Deadline
The Names: Boston Red Sox receive: Kelly Johnson. New York Yankees receive: Stephen Drew, cash.
The Team Context: Not much history between these two squads.
The Player Context: Stephen Oris Drew (Oris?) was the third of his siblings to reach the MLB (after older brothers J.D. and Tim) and carved out a clear if uninspiring reputation as a glove-first everyday shortstop. Drew was a first round pick by the Diamondbacks in 2004, making his debut in 2006 and taking over as starter in short order. Drew’s path to free agency was derailed by an injury-riddled 2011, with a fractured ankle ending his season and delaying the start of his 2012. He couldn’t get the bat working on his return and was traded to Oakland that summer ahead of the expiration of his contract. Drew rebuilt his value on a one-year, $9.5 million contract with the Boston Red Sox. He picked a good place for a prove-it deal and got to be a starter for a championship team worth 2.7 Wins Above Replacement (the figure was actually even higher at the time, but has gone down due to changes to the WAR formula that I’d like to continue ignoring).
This flight may have traveled too close to the sun. You may remember our discussion of Kendrys Morales, the man most-victimized by MLB’s new qualifying offer system. There was a clear second-place finisher for most-vicitimized and it was Stephen Drew. The $14 million qualifying offer would represent a raise on the $9.5 million that Drew had earned in 2013, but he understandably wanted a longer-term deal and thought he could do better. When Drew rejected the qualifying offer, he was projected by MLB Trade Rumors to earn a free agent contract worth something close to 4 years, $48 million.
The lofty projection for Drew despite poor offensive performance was premised on positional scarcity. As Tim Dierkes noted in his free agent profile, “the average shortstop hit just .254/.308/.367 [in 2013], so any offense out of the position is a plus.” This conventional wisdom was beginning to change, with a wave of offensively-gifted shortstops preparing to take over MLB. The Red Sox were at the vanguard, ready to replace Stephen Drew’s spot in the infield with the up-and-coming Xander Bogaerts, and were quickly understood to be out of the conversation based on other teams’ willingness to offer multiple years. When Jhonny Peralta signed a $53 million contract on November 24, it stood to reason that Drew would benefit from a bump to the comparable market. But by December 9, it was clear that Drew’s market was “not as extensive as previously thought.”
Eventually, it seemed that the only interested teams were the Red Sox (still unwilling to offer multiple years) and the Yankees (who were already featuring a retirement-tour Derek Jeter at shortstop). When the Yankees dropped out of the bidding on New Year’s Eve, Drew was left with one half-hearted suitor. His agent Scott Boras denied this, saying in January that “free agency is a long process. It just doesn’t end at Christmas. It’s a January, February, and even a March process.” By the time March rolled around, Boras was extending the potential timeline out to June’s amateur draft. It ended up being not quite that bad, as the Red Sox signed Drew on May 21st for a prorated qualifying offer. By July 12, Drew was openly contemplating the likelihood that he’d be traded despite his horrendous start to the season.
Kelly Johnson and Stephen Drew were double play partners on the 2010 Arizona Diamondbacks. Johnson had started his career in Atlanta in 2005 and restarted it in 2007 after missing a year with the rare position-player Tommy John surgery. He was released by the Braves after the 2009 season but found his groove in a bounceback 2010 season before the Diamondbacks traded him to Toronto in 2011. Johnson stuck with the Blue Jays through the 2012 season, then signed with the Rays and made an exciting career transition to become a full utility player.
Johnson spent his 2005 season as a left fielder, but then played his next 787 games between 2007 and 2012 exclusively at second. With the Rays, he only played 22 games at second while getting 53 games in left field, 16 games at third base, and another three at first base. The newly-versatile Johnson was able to get a slight pay bump (from $2.45 million to $3 million) on his next free agent contract when he signed with the Yankees for the 2014 season. The Yankees would be the third AL East team he had played for in the last three seasons.
The Trade: This was the first trade between the Red Sox and the Yankees since 1997. Brian Cashman spoke about the difficulties in trying to manage a deadline where the top available starting pitchers were on division rivals, saying “they were not moving them to us, period.” Apparently they could still squeeze out Stephen Drew if they begged.
The Results: Stephen Drew was horrible with the Yankees, worth -1.0 WAR in the 46 games he played. Kelly Johnson had an OPS+ of 0 for the Red Sox (meaning he was 100% worse than a league-average hitter) in 25 plate appearances and was traded to the Orioles on August 31st. Both sides were likely happy with what they stuck their hated rival with.
Since we can’t declare either of these teams a “winner,” Johnson’s subsequent trade to the Orioles makes us the biggest winners of all. After joining his first AL East team on August 23, 2011, Kelly Johnson had completed his speedrun and played for all five teams in the division, consecutively, by September 2, 2014. Nobody had ever played for all five of these teams before Johnson accomplished the feat and the only guy who has done it since is Steve Pearce, who took twice as long.
The Aftermath: Kelly Johnson had two seasons left in MLB and spent them the same way. First, he’d sign with Atlanta and create the potential for a nice bookend with the club where he began his career. Then, the Braves would trade him to the Mets over the summer, putting him on a four-trade streak of “trades between division rivals” in just three seasons. Since I’ll be writing about him a few more times in the near future, we’ll save the rest of the material on his post-baseball life.
Because Stephen Drew had been traded midway through the 2014 season, he was ineligible to receive another qualifying offer. Because Stephen Drew had been wretched throughout the 2014 season, nobody would want to give him a qualifying offer anyways. He ended up returning to the Yankees for the 2015 season on a $5 million deal, playing mostly second base and providing limited offensive value. His final two seasons in MLB were spent as a bench player for the Washington Nationals, with his 2017 season and career ending due to an abdominal injury. When he announced his retirement in 2018, he said his first post-playing job would be coaching his kids. It’s not clear if he’s taken another job since then.
The Names: Detroit Tigers receive: David Price. Seattle Mariners receive: Austin Jackson. Tampa Bay Rays receive: Drew Smyly, Willy Adames, Nick Franklin.
The Team Context: The popular narrative is that Lester-for-Cespedes was the climax of the 2014 Trade Deadline. The Red Sox ended up being the biggest volume seller and the A’s had been one of the AL’s best teams over the first half. In comparison, the Detroit Tigers had been relatively quiet, with their earlier addition of Joakim Soria serving as the only addition to an already-loaded roster. With the A’s going all-out to win a championship in 2014, there was increased pressure on the Tigers to capitalize on their own win-now window.
After a franchise-long run of competitive years beginning in 2008, the Tampa Bay Rays were looking at the possibility of a lost season. The Rays lost to the Jays on July 11, falling into last place in the AL East at 42-53 (10.5 games behind the Orioles). A team in such position at such time in the calendar typically knows that their next few weeks will be spent fielding sales calls, particularly a low-revenue team like Tampa Bay that made its bread-and-butter on trading expensive veterans. The next two weeks were therefore complicated by the Rays’ refusal to lose, rattling off nine straight victories to increase their record to 51-53. Fortunately, they were still 6.5 games out of the division, too far to overcome the cold temperature of the wires and circuits that comprised the heart of the Tampa Bay front office.
The Mariners were distinctly the third team in this trade, and it’s probably easiest to dispense with their portion first.
The Player Context: Nick Franklin was one of two highly-regarded young second basemen for the 2013 Seattle Mariners. Franklin didn’t quite have the initial prospect pedigree of Dustin Ackley, but both were first-round draft picks in the 2009 draft (Ackley #2 overall, Franklin #27). 2013 was Franklin’s first season in the majors after he spent April and May dominating AAA pitchers as a 22-year-old. There were encouraging signs from Franklin’s debut, which was worth 2.3 WAR according to Baseball Reference, but pitchers adjusted to him as the season went on and it wasn’t clear he could make the necessary counters. The Mariners cast considerable doubt over that question when they gave Robinson Cano a megacontract to take over the second base role for a decade, pushing Franklin to a purported utility role despite his defensive limitations and opening up endless opportunities for trade speculation. He opened his 2014 season on a terrible note, returning to AAA after May 31 to continue crushing minor league pitching rather than flailing in the majors.
Seattle’s end of this deal was a straight-up swap of Nick Franklin for Austin Jackson. This was actually the second-most exciting three-team trade that Austin Jackson had been involved with, finishing a distant second to a 2009 swap that sent Curtis Granderson to the Yankees, Edwin Jackson and Ian Kennedy to the Diamondbacks, and Jackson, Phil Coke, Daniel Schlereth, and Max Scherzer to Detroit. Jackson proved to be a worthwhile second banana in that trade haul, finishing second in Rookie of the Year voting in 2010 as a centerfielder with good speed and decent power.
Detroit would also part with a member of their rotation in Drew Smyly. Smyly had the bittersweet fortune of coming of age in a loaded Tigers system that featured multiple future Hall of Famers and even more Cy Young winners in its rotation. This was cool when he got to pitch in the ALCS and World Series as a rookie in 2012, but more of a bummer in 2013 when Smyly was bumped to the bullpen because the first four rotation spots were locked down by active Cy Young contenders and the fifth spot was won by Rick Porcello (who wouldn’t win a Cy Young for at least three more seasons). Smyly excelled out of the bullpen as the rare Detroit reliever to remain good, and had a rotation spot for 2014 thanks to Doug Fister’s trade to Washington (which brought back another future Cy Young winner in Robbie Ray). He was more than adequate as a 25-year-old #5 starter, with a 3.93 ERA that would typically be quite tolerable, but he was clearly going to be squeezed out if another frontline starter were brought in.
This brings us to the frontline starter. David Price was the first overall pick in the 2007 Draft and didn’t lose a game at the professional level until August of 2008, by which time he had already been promoted to AAA. Price debuted in MLB that September for a Rays team that was going to the playoffs for the first time ever. Their run ended up taking them all the way to the World Series, with Price pitching out of the bullpen as a 22-year-old. Despite this early usage, Price was clearly destined for the front of a rotation. He made a few starts at AAA to begin the 2009 season, but then joined Tampa Bay’s rotation and had stuck around ever since as one of baseball’s undisputed aces. Price was a few weeks removed from his fourth All-Star appearance and had won the Cy Young award in 2012.
Price had been coveted by pitching-hungry teams at the deadline, but there was no certainty he would move. For one, the Rays weren’t completely out of the hunt and could still have ambitions of trying to prolong the first successful stretch in franchise history, even if the postseason runs since 2008 consisted only of getting bounced in the ALDS. For another, Price was still under team control through arbitration for the 2015 season. Sure, he was likely going to command an arbitration price tag that the thrifty Rays would have no interest in forking over, but there was no imperative need to trade Price by the deadline. If they didn’t trade him now, they could trade him in December and still avoid paying his 2015 salary. In fact, in the days leading up to the deadline, it seemed more likely than not that Price would remain in Tampa.
We should mention Willy Adames, but not for long. At the time of the trade, he was an 18-year-old making his debut in stateside baseball. He was holding his own at Single-A as the youngest player in the Midwest League, but was far enough from the majors that it was reasonable for the Tigers to discount his existence. Most fans had never heard his name.
The Trade: The Lester-for-Cespedes trade broke early enough in the day for teams to process the information and react ahead of the deadline. Critically, the disappearance of Lester from the marketplace meant that teams looking for a top-of-the-line starter only had one name left circled. For a team like the Tigers, who were only going to benefit from elite additions, Price was going to be the only acceptable deadline addition. And because their biggest competition in the American League was the team adding Lester, making a deadline addition seemed all the more necessary.
David Price thought the trade deadline was one day earlier than it was and believed he’d made it through unscathed. The Rays were prepared to stare down potential suitors and let the deadline pass without budging. Suddenly, movement emerged as it was reported that the Rays were “definitely moving Price.” The next 90 minutes were a flurry of baseball reporters vomiting out mostly incorrect information on acquiring teams, with each of the Dodgers, Mariners, Pirates, Cardinals, and Yankees bandied about as teams to watch. Eventually, the three-team structure emerged that would leave Price as the only piece departing from Tampa, with two teams sending assets back. Austin Jackson had no warning whatsoever, as he was suddenly pulled from a game that he was playing in and received a standing ovation from Tigers fans.
Despite the fact that the Rays were getting players from two different teams, the public was not high on the return package. A since-deleted Reddit account put the trade in context: “A deadline full of overpayments for starting pitchers and it’s capped off by the best starter available going for that measly package? It doesn’t add up considering how many teams were interested until the very end. Hard to believe a better offer was never on the table.” Even the media reaction “had a quizzical or even disappointed tone,” according to Tony Blengino of Fangraphs in his defense of the Rays’ return.
While Franklin and Smyly were observable characters that spectators could choose to be bearish or bullish on, the greatest offset between reactions may have been due to Adames. Before the season, when most public prospect lists are compiled, Adames was one of a thousand 18-year-olds from the Dominican Republic who flashed enough baseball talent to get a professional contract. He was something like the 38th-best Tigers prospect. By the time of the trade, he had put together 400 credible plate appearances in full-season baseball, clearly separating himself from the typical pace of his age group. Blengino, and presumably the Rays, were able to account for this, with Adames ranking #48 on his baseball-wide “mid-season minor league position player prospect list.”
Of course, it was easy to appreciate Detroit’s side of the transaction. Price’s addition to the Tigers’ rotation meant they featured a 2011 Cy Young winner (Justin Verlander), a 2012 winner, (Price, with Verlander in second), and a 2013 winner (Scherzer). Nobody on their staff won in 2014 or 2015, but this was counteracted with two awards in 2016 (Porcello won in Boston, with Verlander in second, while Scherzer won in Washington) and continued in 2017 (Scherzer won in Washington), 2019 (Verlander won in Houston), 2021 (Robbie Ray won in Toronto), and 2022 (Verlander won in Houston). The only years between 2011 and 2022 where nobody on the 2014 Tigers’ staff won a Cy Young award were 2020 (pandemic), 2018 (Verlander and Scherzer each finished in second place), 2015 (Price finished in second place), and, naturally, 2014.
The Mariners were just swapping a prospect who had either been blocked or washed out in Nick Franklin for a starting center fielder in Austin Jackson. The fans were thrilled.
The Results: The easiest place to start is probably with David Price. Price returned to Tampa Bay to face his old team on August 21. In the first inning, Ben Zobrist reached on an error and then scored when Brandon Guyer hit a triple, sticking Price with an unearned run. Price was perfect from that point forward, completing the game without allowing any more baserunners. The Tigers lost, 1-0, sticking Price with a pitching line of 8.0 IP, one hit, zero walks, zero earned runs, loss. That was unfortunately similar to the decisive Game 3 of the ALDS, when Price took the loss despite allowing just two runs in eight innings of work as the Tigers were eliminated and a near-dynasty came to an end.
As you’ll recall, Price had another year of team control and started the 2015 season on a Detroit team that had run out of steam. He ended up being a star of the 2015 Trade Deadline as well, moving to Toronto in a trade we’ll discuss next year.
Austin Jackson’s ability to hit vanished upon arrival in Seattle, with a .229/.267/.260 slash line that outshone his capabilities in centerfield. Like Price, Jackson also came with an extra season of team control, though the Mariners were probably less enthused about it than Detroit. Jackson was much better in Seattle in 2015 than in 2014, though that was a low bar that still resulted in a below-average hitter. Jackson left Seattle at the 2015 waiver deadline, when the Mariners sent him to Chicago with salary retained in exchange for a player to be named later. It doesn’t seem like they’ve gotten around to naming that player yet.
Fortunately for Seattle, all they gave up for Jackson was Nick Franklin, who graduated to “bust” status during his time in Tampa Bay. Franklin’s trajectory was the reverse-Jackson, with a sub-mediocre 2014 graduating to an abysmal 2015 where he struggled to play any defensive position including pinch hitter. The Rays were able to coax above-average production from Franklin during the 2016 season, primarily achieved by never letting him hit against left-handed pitching. Franklin was worth 0.2 WAR in 60 games thanks to these protective measures, the only season other than his rookie year where he contributed positive value to an MLB team. After that 2.3 WAR rookie year, Franklin ended his career with a 1.2 total figure. The Rays designated him for assignment ahead of the 2017 season.
The other two players that Tampa Bay received in exchange had better outcomes. Drew Smyly immediately took Price’s spot in the rotation and kept a gleaming 1.70 ERA to close out the 2014 season. A shoulder scare in 2015, in which surgery was reported as likely and then ultimately ruled out, limited his ability to pitch that year and may have harmed his results in a down-year 2016. That winter, the Rays did what the Rays do and traded Smyly away to the Mariners when he had two years of team control remaining. Smyly was injured for all of 2017 and released before ever throwing a pitch in Seattle. Good trade for the Rays.
Willy Adames was firmly on the baseball world’s radar after his inclusion in this trade, and he was a consensus top-100 prospect in baseball going into the 2015 season. By the 2017 season, he was a top-20 prospect and the return package for David Price started to look a lot more palatable. Adames made his MLB debut in 2018 and was already an above-average hitter who could hold down the shortstop position for years to come. Of course, this is the Rays we’re talking about, so there were fewer “years to come” than might be possible with less penny-pinching organizations. Adames was traded to Milwaukee midway through the 2021 season and has been the Brewer’s 7th-best player by WAR this year. This is actually a relative down year; he was their best player in 2022 and 4th-best player last year.
The Aftermath: The 2015 season would be David Price’s last as a Cy Young contender. After the season, he signed a massive contract with the Boston Red Sox that guaranteed him $217 million. Price’s inability to reach his Tampa Bay heights combined with a heated altercation with team broadcaster Dennis Eckersley caused some animosity in Boston, though these feelings were generally smoothed over when the Red Sox won the World Series in 2018. Ahead of the 2020 season, the final years of Price’s contract were traded to Los Angeles in a move that included future Dodgers legend Mookie Betts. Price opted out during the 2020 season, though he still received a World Series ring from the Dodgers, and mostly spent his final two seasons pitching from the bullpen. He forecasted his retirement during the 2022 season in an interview with Bob Nightengale where he said “it’s just time, everything on my body hurts.” The final pitching appearance of his MLB career was the 8th inning of a September 30th game against the Rockies that the Dodgers led 9-0. Price allowed one hit, which was the same thing Hanser Alberto did when he pitched the 9th.
We’ve covered Willy Adames sufficiently, right? He’s still out there in Milwaukee. Drew Smyly is also still in MLB, pitching to a 2.88 ERA out of the Chicago Cubs’ bullpen. Smyly has spent the last three seasons in Chicago, though this is his first season without making a start since 2013. This is a rare period of stability after a 2019-2021 stretch that saw him spend time with the Rangers, Phillies, Giants, and Braves.
That leaves us with two remaining retired players, both of whom last played in MLB in 2018. Austin Jackson became a one-year contract guy after leaving Seattle, signing with the White Sox in 2016 and then Cleveland in 2017. Jackson signed with the Giants for the 2018 season, then was traded to Texas near the deadline and released a week later. He signed with the Mets shortly thereafter and played the final 57 games of his career in New York. The last report on Austin Jackson suggested that he was “open to an MLB return,” though the post noted that it was “somewhat odd to see this news now,” given the report emerged on April 17, 2020, “in the midst of a pandemic-driven hiatus.” Nothing ever came of that, and he returned to the Tigers this year to receive the Willie Horton African-American Legacy Award. He has a thick beard now.
Nick Franklin never reached the heights of Austin Jackson and may have been more reluctant to give it up. The decision was mostly made for him, though — Franklin’s 2017 was split between the Brewers and Angels, while his 2018 at the MLB level consisted of one game for Milwaukee where he went 0-for-2 before suffering a quad injury that turned out to be career-ending, at least as far as MLB was concerned. 2019 was his last season of affiliated baseball, splitting the season between the AAA Indianapolis Indians and the AAA Salt Lake Bees. His independent career started in 2021, when he signed with the Kansas City Monarchs. Franklin was subsequently traded to the Sioux City Explorers and then on to the Kane County Cougars, neither of which are trades I expect to be covered by Trades Ten Years Later. Kane County released Franklin on Halloween of 2022 and from what I can see of his Instagram, he’s now a baseball coach for Trinity Prep in Orlando.
This concludes our coverage of the 2014 MLB Trade Deadline! We are planning to discuss August’s waiver trades during an otherwise trade-poor period of September. Next trade will probably be NBA.