July 19, 2014
The Names: Los Angeles Angels receive: Huston Street, Trevor Gott. San Diego Padres receive: Taylor Lindsey, R.J. Alvarez, Jose Rondon, and Elliot Morris.
The Team Context: The Angels were one of the best teams in baseball and on the hunt for bullpen upgrades, as we discussed a few weeks back. New acquisition Jason Grilli had stabilized his performance in Anaheim and the month of July was going really well, with the Angels boasting a 12-2 record for the month going into the All-Star Break. The first game after the break was on July 18, which the Angels won in a 16th inning walkoff to make it 13-2 on the month.
In our prior discussions of the Padres, we’ve foreshadowed that GM Josh Byrnes was in the final days of his employment in that capacity. His day had come; Byrnes was fired on June 22 and the Padres set to work finding his replacement. They’d eventually name A.J. Preller to the position on August 6, putting this trade smack dab in the middle of the “No General Manager” era in San Diego. Even though whoever had the keys (apparently, AJ Hinch and Omar Minaya) was wielding them on a temporary basis, the trade deadline was still approaching and the Padres were not going to make the playoffs. Anybody could’ve given the clear directive to sell their veterans.
The Player Context: Huston Street was born and raised in Austin, Texas, possibly the funniest city for somebody named “Huston” to hail from (a normal first name was right there!). Unlike New York’s Houston Street, Huston Street’s first name is pronounced like the city of Houston. Huston has a brother named “Juston,” which you’d think would be pronounced like “Justin” but might be pronounced “Juiceton” given family precedent. Unfortunately, Huston also has brothers named Ryan, Jordan, and Hanson, which kills the joke somewhat.
The Street boys grew up as something like royalty as the son of Texas Longhorn legend James Street. James played football and baseball at Texas and the baseball career would’ve been plenty to live up to. James is the only pitcher in Longhorn history to throw a perfect game and won the team MVP award three times. But he gained national fame when he won all 20 games he started as quarterback, with his most notable performance coming in the 19th start. The 1969 “Game of the Century” pitted #1 Texas against #2 Arkansas and was declared a national championship game by then-President Richard Nixon, who decided he was going to attend the game and give a plaque to the winner. The Longhorns went down 14-0, but James led a comeback to triumph 15-14 and cement his place as a Texas legend. The game received a Neilsen rating of 52.1, which is higher than every football game in history.
It was probably impossible to live up to precisely that standard, but James Street’s legend was limited to the University of Texas — an injury sustained during the 1970 College World Series prevented him from pursuing an MLB career. Huston Street was also a two-sport star in his high school career, but settled on his vocation early enough in life that he was already being used as a closer during his days at the University of Texas. Typically, guys who are good enough to pitch at the MLB level work as starting pitchers in the amateur ranks, but Huston Street was atypically good at closing. He was a three time All-American and was named MVP of the 2002 College World Series when he was just a freshman, culminating in a Longhorn career where he pitched to a 1.31 ERA and recorded a school-record 41 career saves.
The Oakland A’s drafted Street with the 40th pick of the 2004 MLB Draft and he didn’t waste time, pitching in 21 games across three levels of the minor leagues in 2004 and then making the Opening Day roster for the MLB club in 2005. Street was closing MLB games by May and recorded 23 saves in his rookie season, winning the AL Rookie of the Year and somehow receiving MVP votes. The ascent was quick and then the ride was steady; Street continued to work as either a closer or set-up man for basically the rest of his MLB career.
A fun quirk of Street’s career is that, despite playing for a wide variety of MLB teams, he never hit free agency. Street’s first move came in November of 2008, after Brad Ziegler had taken the closer role in Oakland while Street missed time with an injury. This was a prime era for smart baseball teams to leverage trade value from “proven closers” and the Moneyball A’s were happy to do so, trading Street to Colorado as part of a package for Matt Holliday. Street recorded 35 saves for the Rockies in 2009 and signed a three-year, $22.5 million contract extension with the team after the season. But after two years of that contract, the Rockies sent him to the division rival Padres. Street’s first season in San Diego was also his first year as an All-Star, and he agreed to another two-year extension (plus a third-year team option) with the Padres midway through the 2012 season.
Street had made his second All-Star Game in 2014 and boasted 24 saves with a 1.09 ERA (thanks, in part, to stranding all but one batter that got on base against him). He was making an affordable $7 million that season and had a $7 million club option for 2015 that any team would seem likely to exercise. Street would turn 31 in August and could be a part of a contending team’s playoff roster for at least the next two seasons.
Street was joined in this trade by a total of five minor leaguers. Joining him on the journey from San Diego to Anaheim was the surprisingly similar Trevor Gott. Like Street, Gott was born and raised in the city of his state’s flagship university, then played college baseball there (in Gott’s case, it was Lexington, Kentucky). Like Street, Gott immediately worked as a closer at the college level and ended his career with the school record for career saves. And while he couldn’t keep pace with Street’s lightning run through the minor leagues, Gott was holding his own on his way up the ladder. The first sign of any hiccup had been on his recent promotion to AA, where he had a 4.63 ERA in his first 11.2 innings of opportunity at the level.
The headliner of the package headed to San Diego was Taylor Lindsey. The Angels didn’t have a great farm system, but Lindsey stood out as their top prospect entering the 2014 season. Lindsey’s best tool was hitting for average and he was demonstrating some compelling power in the minor leagues, even if he was likely limited to being just a defensively-average second baseman. He had played 75 games for AAA Salt Lake City and was a safe bet to make it to the major leagues in short order. The other near-term prospect was R.J. Alvarez, another pure reliever who had struck out 38% of the batters he faced at A+ and AA over the last two seasons. His ERA across 27 AA innings in 2014 was a miniscule 0.33, which is the sort of thing that catches the attention of even a casual fan. Alvarez was charged with just one run in just one outing, where he came in with runners on 1st and 2nd, walked the bases loaded, walked another guy to score a run, and then left the game.
The longer-term prospects were Jose Rondon and Elliot Morris. Rondon was the better-regarded player, a shortstop out of Venezuela who was just emerging from rookie ball. He “look[ed] like a future No. 2 hole hitter” even if his debut wasn’t expected until 2016 or 2017. Morris was a 4th-round pick in the 2013 MLB Draft out of Pierce College in Washington, the first time a player had been drafted from the school. Morris had missed his 2011 season while recovering from Tommy John surgery, made his initial return to pitching in 2012, and then posted 95 strikeouts in 66.1 innings in 2013 to get himself drafted.
The Trade: As the Padres failed to compete in 2013 and 2014, it became apparent that Street was going to be traded midway through a contract extension once more. As the 2014 deadline approached, Street came to accept the situation. “Last year I definitely did not want to be traded. Now, my plan is to play for whatever uniform they put me in,” Street said on July 11. On July 14, Street told Jim Bowden that he expected to be traded and had conversations with the Padres to that effect. On July 15, Street said “I would love it” when asked about the possibility of joining the Angels, describing how great it would be to play with Albert Pujols and Mike Trout while being managed by Mike Scioscia. Apparently he was making up for past reluctance with present enthusiasm.
When reports emerged that the Padres were getting close to trading Street, it had become evident that Anaheim was his destination. At 2:59 PM Pacific on July 18, Jim Bowden reported that the Angels were “close to finalizing” a deal to add Street. Thirty minutes later, Jeff Fletcher dismissed this talk as “premature,” and said that “nothing is imminent.” Presumably, the two sides continued to discuss the swap that afternoon, leading to a 7:16 PM report that the talks were at a “sensitive” stage and a 7:20 PM elaboration that the sensitive stage in question was the exchange of medical reports. By 7:57, reporting had only advanced to include the return package as “Lindsey plus at least one other player.”
For plugged in Angels fans, the arrival of Street had been sufficiently anticipated to pass as unsurprising. All that was left was to find out which prospects were given up, and this slow drip of information wasn’t helping. The initial report of “Lindsey plus at least one other player” framed expectations that were bruised as the “plus” evolved to include fan favorites like Alvarez and Rondon. It seemed like an overpay from a farm system that wasn’t teeming with currency to begin with.
Keith Law at ESPN saw the trade as a huge win for San Diego, saying that “the amount of talent heading to San Diego in exchange for Huston Street is baffling.” He links to his own tweet and writes “I said on Twitter that I wouldn’t have dealt shortstop prospect Jose Rondon straight-up for two-plus months of Street’s services.” That linked tweet seems to have been deleted, potentially because literally any two months of Huston Street’s career would prove to be better than the entirety of Jose Rondon’s.
The Results: Huston Street kept up the good work, taking over as closer for the Angels and notching 17 more saves to end the year with aggregate totals of 41 saves and a 1.37 ERA. He allowed runs for the Angels on August 17, September 5, and September 21 but otherwise kept a shutout in the 25 other appearances he made during the 2014 homestretch. The Angels exercised his no-brainer club option for 2015 and, in typical Huston Street fashion, negotiated a two-year contract extension during May of that year.
Typically, this “The Results” section is used to summarize what players did with their acquiring teams as a means to assess who “won the trade.” Huston Street is the only one of these six players who had a notable MLB career. We are so short on MLB achievements that there’s almost nothing that can be discussed in the confines of this section.
We can fairly easily work through Taylor Lindsey and Elliot Morris, neither of whom ever made it to MLB. Lindsey was already at AAA with the Angels and continued playing there upon joining the Padres organization, but he suddenly seemed wildly overmatched by the level. He spent 2015 and 2016 splitting time between AA and AAA, with most time spent in AA and none of his offensive numbers looking good in either league. Morris capped out at AA and was only able to throw 15 innings in 2016.
R.J. Alvarez was able to meet expectations and make it to MLB by 2014, where he posted a 1.13 ERA in a small sample of eight innings. The Padres traded Alvarez away that December as part of the First Act of AJ Preller, so I guess the fact that he didn’t have much of a subsequent MLB career isn’t their problem.
Jose Rondon also met expectations by making his MLB debut in late 2016. He failed to impress in 26 plate appearances for the Padres and that was the only opportunity they would give him. Rondon spent his 2017 in the minor leagues, then left to Chicago ahead of the 2018 season. The Padres got 26 plate appearances from Rondon and 33 batters faced from Alvarez, summing to a total of 59 plate appearances handled by the four prospects they received in this trade.
In contrast, the one prospect they traded away faced 202 batters in his one season pitching for the Angels. Trevor Gott pitched to a 3.02 ERA in 2015, serving as a quality middle reliever until he was traded to Washington that winter for Yunel Escobar. In this six player trade, the Angels managed to get the two most valuable players.
The Aftermath: After a career spent signing club-friendly extensions and then getting traded, Street got the last laugh against an employer after signing his 2015 extension with the Angels. Street had recurrent injuries in 2016, missing the month of May and then being shut down for the season after a July 31 appearance where he blew a 3-0 save, allowing 5 runs to spike his season ERA to 6.45 and lose the game for the Angels. Street didn’t return to the active roster until June 23 of 2017, then was placed on the injured list again after making four scoreless appearances. During Street’s final appearance on July 2, he felt his groin pull while facing Jean Segura, who hit a single to center field to put runners at first and third. Street knew that he had a 2.96 career ERA entering the game, faced the knowledge that this was going to be his final MLB appearance, and felt the fear of this career mark slipping above 3.00 if he let the inning get away from him. He gathered himself and threw one more pitch, an 84 mph fastball down the middle that Ben Gamel mercifully hit to second base. He ended his career with a 2.95 ERA.
This anecdote comes from a June 2019 profile of Street by Pedro Moura (linked above and again here). The article discusses Street’s post-retirement leisure activities of coaching baseball for his sons, playing Call of Duty, and smoking marijuana, along with his financial pursuits in real estate, with goals to make “another one hundred or two hundred million dollars” by age 50 and $2 billion by age 60. His ongoing business project was the development of a parcel of land in Austin into what is now a hotel the Loren at Lady Bird Lake. Street owned the land through an entity named 16 Piggybank Ltd., which in turn is managed by “Stetson Trueh, LLC,” with “Stetson Trueh” being a pretty lazy anagram for “Huston Street” (he could’ve gone with “Southern Test, LLC” or “Esther Sutton, LLC” and at least made it interesting). He sold the land at the end of 2019 and spent 2020 and 2021 as a “student assistant” with the University of Texas baseball program, where he coached alongside former teammate Troy Tulowitzki. I’m not able to ascertain what he’s currently up to from his Twitter account, but I’m quite clear on who he’s voting for in the upcoming presidential election.
The only person in this trade who is still an MLB player is, naturally, Trevor Gott. He’s not a great MLB player, but has carved out a career as a generally acceptable reliever with the Nationals, Giants (including spending the entire 2021 season with their AAA team), Brewers, Mariners, and Mets. Gott signed a one-year contract with the A’s for 2024, but tore his UCL towards the end of spring training and is missing the season with Tommy John surgery. He is making more this season ($1.5 million) than in any prior season of his MLB career.
R.J. Alvarez’s big league success was short-lived. He threw 20 innings for Oakland in 2015 and allowed 23 runs to score, then was stuck in the minor leagues until 2022. He emerged from his seven-year MLB hiatus to make one appearance for the Mets, which started on a high note with a strikeout but didn’t end until two home runs had been hit against him to stick him with the loss (the Mets were shut out 5-0). He hasn’t pitched in organized baseball since 2022 and is presumably not going to do so again.
Jose Rondon arrived in Chicago in 2018 after the White Sox claimed him off waivers. He spent a year and a half with the organization before moving to Baltimore, where he had one at-bat (keep that in mind for the Immaculate Grid). Rondon didn’t play in 2020, then made it into 63 MLB games for the Cardinals in 2021. His MLB career seems to have ended after he received an 80-game suspension from MLB when he tested positive for Boldenone — he has played in the Mexican League since then.
Our last two players are the easiest to summarize. Taylor Lindsey became a free agent after the 2016 season and signed with the independent Laredo Lemurs on April 20, 2017. On May 2, the Laredo Lemurs withdrew from their league and on May 3, an attorney for the Lemurs’ owner said the “2017 season is lost and the team itself has been forever lost.” Presumably scarred from that turbulent two weeks, Lindsey doesn’t seem to have played baseball since, but it’s hard to filter past results about the UK construction company of the same name. Elliot Morris has a common enough name and a short enough baseball career that it’s impossible to find any information about him on the Internet either. All that comes up is this political polling guy or this musical artist.
Miscellaneous: The Perfect Game scouting page for Troy Tulowitzki’s 10 year old son. There are only four guys named “R.J.” who have played in MLB and the first one was named R.J. Reynolds (not that R.J. Reynolds). The Athletic Director at Pierce College described the experience of Elliot Morris being drafted by an MLB team as “very numbing at this point.” The 1969 Texas-Arkansas game was the last major sporting event played between two all-white teams. The one time James Street umpired a game where Huston Street was pitching as a kid, he called four consecutive strikes as balls and then threw his son out of the game for arguing. “Street also once told [fellow Angels reliever Joe] Smith it was mathematically impossible to beat him at chess because of how many games he had already played. After months of discussions, they agreed to play. When Smith won, Street immediately proposed a rematch.”