The 2014 Winter Meetings, Pt. 1
The opening sparks of a hot stove about to reach inferno.
Baseball’s offseason is different from the other major American sports. In other leagues, free agent contracts are often negotiated discreetly in advance and then announced within minutes of the offseason beginning, with a flurry of accompanying trades to make rosters fit together. Baseball’s hot stove burns more slowly, with transactions interspersed throughout the winter months.
To the extent that the flowing river of lava has an eruptive epicenter, it takes place at the Winter Meetings. For a week each December, all of baseball converges on the same convention center, creating opportunities for counterparties to meet face-to-face and bring loosely contemplated ideas to fruition. My recollection was that we missed the winter meetings last year, but it turns out there just wasn’t much action. The clubs met at Disney World and the biggest event was two agents getting in a shouting match in a parking lot (or the three-team Mark Trumbo/Adam Eaton trade that we did discuss).
The 2014 meetings were in San Diego and were substantially more festive. Eleven MLB teams finalized trades during the Winter Meetings, with several more finalized over the next week as paperwork was completed that allowed the moves to proceed. There were 24 MLB trades in the 12 days between December 8 and December 20, 2014 – that’s a lot, so we better get started.
(A Reddit user named “Orlandipo” compiled a list of the Winter Meetings moves at the time. Available at this link if you want a spoiler for some of what’s coming. Their username was about 18 months from being nullified via trade.)
December 8, 2014
Oakland Athletics receive: Joey Wendle
Cleveland receives: Brandon Moss
Here’s something I wrote a few months ago:
[Yoenis] Cespedes, along with Josh Donaldson and Brandon Moss, gained the collective acronym-nickname “Home Run DMC.” The preferred nickname might have been “Runs DMC,” depending on the source, but there’s no ambiguity that each of Donaldson, Moss, and Cespedes were seen as irreplaceable.
I’m quoting my discussion of the trade that sent Yoenis Cespedes to Boston. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Josh Donaldson was shipped off to Toronto. By December, the once-iconic trio had been downsized to one member and there was no lingering illusion that anybody in the Athletics organization was “irreplaceable.”
For most of his career, Brandon Moss had quite perfectly fit the definition of “replaceable.” Moss debuted for the Red Sox in 2007, then got caught in the crossfire of the Manny Ramirez trade and shipped to Pittsburgh. He got an extended run in MLB for the first time in 2009, which was unimpressive enough for him to be designated for assignment prior to the start of the 2010 season. With his defense limited to first base or near-passable work in a corner outfield, the bar for Moss’s offense was substantially higher than the bar for an average major leaguer, one that he was already struggling to surpass. Moss hung around on the fringes of the majors for the next couple of seasons, finally earning a long-term promotion to the Oakland Athletics in June of 2012. After scuffling through the first five games of his callup, he caught a lucky break when the A’s started a series at the high altitude of Colorado’s Coors Field. Moss hit four home runs in three games in the thin air, then hit another the next day back home in Oakland for good measure. That flipped some sort of switch. He would remain a major leaguer for the rest of his time in the organization, revered for his power-hitting and forward-thinking approach to hitting.
Moss remained lightly-regarded through his breakout 2012 season, finally attracting attention when he sustained the performance throughout a full season in 2013. In 2014, he was a centerpiece of the A’s lineup and a once-improbable All-Star despite playing through an increasingly painful hip injury that would require offseason surgery. You know he’s about to be traded and by this point, he did too. On December 4, Jayson Stark was told by an executive that the A’s were “GOING to trade Brandon Moss,” with sufficient confidence in his source to use all-caps on the word “GOING.”
If not for the preceding trades of Cespedes and Donaldson, this might have been considered just another example of the A’s spinning up quality ballplayers from scrap metal and turning them into trade assets. Like Donaldson, Moss had arrived on the team without any expectations and suddenly started playing at an All-Star level. Unlike Donaldson, Moss’s contributions had fewer dimensions and were more susceptible to variance. If the two players both stopped hitting for power, Donaldson would still be a solid hitter and great defender at third base, while Moss would revert to the well-rounded negative that he had been in his early career. And with a nagging hip injury already in the picture, any skepticism about his future performance had a tangible basis for concern. With two years of team control left at higher arbitration salaries, Moneyball dictated that this was an appropriate time to trade Moss.
Cleveland was quickly identified as the leading suitor for Moss, with infield prospect Joey Wendle pegged as the potential return. Cleveland had drafted Wendle in 2012 and witnessed encouraging overall numbers at the minor leagues in his first professional seasons, with an average all-around profile boosted by great ability to make contact. He broke his hamate bone while playing in AA during the 2014 season but had played well enough that reasonable minds could expect him to play at AAA in 2015. Before the transaction was finalized, comparable Cleveland shortstop prospects Erik Gonzalez and Jose Ramirez were also considered. According to MLB Pipeline, Gonzalez was the 12th-best prospect in the system, Ramirez was the 8th, and Wendle was the 11th. These were theoretically three near-equal rolls of the dice, with the midpoint selected.
In their MLB careers, Erik Gonzalez has been worth 1.1 WAR, Joey Wendle has been worth 13.3, and Jose Ramirez has been worth 52.4 while continuing to add to that total at a Hall of Fame pace. I guess they were ranked in the correct order.
Unfortunately for Oakland, that 13.3 figure oversells Wendle’s contribution to the club. He made his debut in 2016 and played in just 8 games during the 2017 season before he was squeezed off the roster and traded to Tampa Bay for Jonah Heim. In his first year as a Ray, Wendle immediately blossomed into a superutility player, finishing 4th in 2018 Rookie of the Year voting while playing 139 games at five positions. He was a key part of the Rays core that went to the World Series in 2020 and was an All-Star in 2021. This was a tough break for the A’s, but at least they got Jonah Heim, who has put together a solid 6.3 WAR in his own career. Wait, the A’s traded him away to Texas after the first 0.1 of those WAR. Compound bad timing.
At least they picked the right time to trade away Brandon Moss. Moss could still hit home runs in Cleveland, but every other part of his game evaporated as he failed to keep his OBP higher than .300. He was sent on to St. Louis at the 2015 trade deadline, where he rebounded somewhat to settle at a level slightly between his unplayable early-career performance and his actually good Oakland era. Moss would end his career with a trade back to Oakland in 2018, and though he didn’t end up making the team, he continued to collect paychecks for the rest of that season.
December 9, 2014
Chicago White Sox receive: Jeff Samardzija, Michael Ynoa
Oakland Athletics receive: Chris Bassitt, Marcus Semien, Josh Phegley, Rangel Ravelo
Jeff Samardzija arrived in Oakland in July in one of the biggest trades of the summer. When we discussed that trade five months ago, we identified the deal as an immediate loss for Oakland that would be redeemed when they traded away Jeff Samardzija in December. After a rough stretch living with the A’s as retroactive trade losers, plus one more trade just now where we made fun of them for giving up on Joey Wendle too soon, the time has come for Oakland’s redemption.
To refresh your memory, Samardzija was a pitcher long-respected by the sabermetric community who had finally broken out in 2014. His sub-3 ERA ticked up slightly after arriving in Oakland, but not so much that he wasn’t able to finish the season with a 2.99 ERA. He probably would have gotten Cy Young votes if his performance had been corralled to either the AL or the NL. But Samardzija was set to be a free agent after the 2015 season and was reportedly interested in testing his value on the open market. He sure wasn’t going to be signing an extension at the price that these Oakland A’s would offer.
The classic archetype of a baseball trade positions one team as the “buyer,” acquiring an MLB veteran to help their team win today, with the other team as a “seller” that picks up prospects for their future contributions. But for teams like the Moneyball A’s (or present-day Brewers, to pick one example) who tend to remain generally competitive while running a low payroll, the type of prospect you target is different. Instead of targeting somebody who could be the best player on your team five years from now, you’ll seek to acquire near-immediate contributors who still have potential to raise their reputation in the years ahead. If you do it right, you should end up with at least one new player that keeps your team competitive while also enabling you to continue making sales down the road.
While all four of these players were still “prospects” in some sense, each had already played for the White Sox except for Rangel Ravelo, who was coming off a full season at AA and could be expected to debut before long. The first call up had been Josh Phegley (July 5, 2013), a catcher who made it to AAA by 2011 but hadn’t done much in limited MLB opportunities as a backup. He would turn 27 before the 2015 season began. Next was Marcus Semien (September 4, 2013), an infielder who was a borderline top-100 prospect before the 2014 season. Semien was an East Bay native with impressive on-base skills and power ability in the minors, though he had yet to fully tap into those abilities in his MLB opportunities. Semien was theoretically a shortstop, but couldn’t really play the position well enough to ensure that he wasn’t really a long-term second or third baseman. The final member of the package was Chris Bassitt (August 30, 2014), who had just made his debut on August 30. Bassitt was a 16th-round pick from the University of Akron who pushed his way to the majors thanks to some statistically impressive minor league seasons. A broken hand had stalled his progress in 2014, but not enough to prevent him from a solid showing in his first 29.2 innings of MLB action.
There was also the matter of Michael Ynoa, a generally confusing inclusion in this trade going from Oakland to Chicago. In 2008, a 16-year-old Ynoa was seen as the best amateur prospect in Latin America, described as “every scout’s dream.” The A’s set a team record when they paid him a $4.25 million signing bonus, and he was ranked as a top-100 prospect in baseball well in advance of his professional debut. In the intervening time, Ynoa had Tommy John surgery and pitched poorly at basically every minor league opportunity, casting doubts on his major league future. He was still ranked as a prospect, but seemed to profile as a reliever among those who thought he had a major league future.
The hazard of acquiring players with MLB experience is that they’ve already made a first impression. One of the joys of your team receiving a prospect in a trade is the lack of concrete information you have about them and the corresponding ability to recklessly dream on their potential. Rangel Ravelo? Never heard of him but they say he’ll be a great hitter one day. Can’t wait to see him in a few years. Marcus Semien? From the White Sox? That’s more of a known quantity, one that brings the inevitable mortality of baseball players into sharper focus. When Semien was reputed as the headline of the trade return, fans declared that “Beane’s offseason goes from questionable to basically indefensible.” It was hard to argue with given the clear similarities and wide gulf between Addison Russell, an elite shortstop prospect traded away to acquire Samardzija, and Marcus Semien, a lesser shortstop talent received when Samardzija departed later that year.
It’s incredibly easy to argue with now. We’ll start on the surface level, with Jeff Samardzija capsizing during the 2015 season. Samardzija led the major leagues in both hits and earned runs allowed while also leading the AL in home runs allowed for good measure. This was a terrible last impression to make in his final year before free agency, but wasn’t bad enough to stop the Giants from giving Samardzija a $90 million contract after the season. The White Sox were left with one bad season from a pitcher during a season where they went 76-86. Bad trade!
It went better for Oakland. Marcus Semien took over as the everyday shortstop and held down the position through 2020. From 2015 through 2018, Semien was a slightly below-average hitter whose defense gradually improved to excellent at shortstop. Then, while Addison Russell’s career was coming to a close in 2019, Semien broke through with an amazing offensive season that was worth 8.5 WAR when paired with his typically great defense. He placed third in MVP voting in a season that was worth more WAR than Jeff Samardzija put up over the remaining six seasons of his career. The brilliant acquisition of Semien almost makes up for the fact that the A’s offered him an embarrassing contract as a free agent after the 2020 season instead of extending him a qualifying offer, watched him sign a larger one-year deal in Toronto and finish third in MVP voting again, then sign a mega-deal with the division rival Rangers. Through the first three years of that contract, Semien has been worth 17.0 WAR (the 8th-best total in MLB over that period) and helped lead Texas to its first ever World Series title in 2023. He was worth 20.4 WAR as an Athletic, a total that he’ll surpass as a Ranger with one more season of his usual performance. So that wasn’t the best resolution for the Athletics. Did I mention he’s an East Bay native?
We could’ve spent a whole post discussing Marcus Semien and maybe we should have — barring a particularly surprising late-career development, this is the only time he’d be traded in his career. The unfortunate irony is that, with full knowledge of what’s transpired with the Athletics since then, the easiest argument to make is that the A’s actually should’ve traded him away after the 2019 season. Wouldn’t that have been the Moneyball move? Perhaps a more stable team would’ve had the confidence to do so.
Bassitt had another effective season in 2015 before undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2016 that truncated his time in the majors. He returned to the rotation in 2018 and has been one of baseball’s most consistent pitchers since, rarely missing a start and regularly keeping an ERA in the 3s. He’s placed on Cy Young ballots in three years without ever being an actually credible threat to win the award. The A’s traded him to the Mets ahead of the 2022 season and he’s about to pitch the final year of a three-year contract he signed with the Blue Jays. Bassitt’s 9.9 WAR in his six years as an Athletic was also a higher total than Samardzija put up in his post-trade career, making him an independent basis for overwhelming victory in this trade.
The remaining stories are less compelling. Josh Phegley had a good 2015 season and was used sparingly thereafter. Rangel Ravelo was released by the A’s before making it to the majors, though he eventually got 84 MLB plate appearances for the Cardinals in 2019 and 2020. Michael Ynoa threw 59 innings for the White Sox in 2016 and 2017, but continued to sign contracts with major league organizations into the 2020s as teams failed to resist his past promise.
Also December 9, 2014
Chicago Cubs receive: Miguel Montero
Arizona Diamondbacks receive: Zack Godley, Jeferson Mejia
On most occasions when we’ve discussed the Arizona Diamondbacks, we’ve mentioned that their 2010s had gotten off to a rough start that resulted in a front office regime change. Throughout the down years, Miguel Montero was a fixture in front of the backstop. Montero made his debut just after his 23rd birthday in 2006, playing six games at catcher that year. He split time over the next two seasons and became the regular starter by 2009, with solid offense that made him quite a useful player considering his ability to catch. Montero was popular among Diamondback fans for his play as well as his genuine personality, playing with his heart on his sleeve and making an impact off the field.
There was a distinct possibility that his best days were now behind him. Montero lived through a back injury for much of 2013, costing him playing time and hindering his performance when he was able to suit up. After four consecutive seasons as an above-average hitter, Montero was almost 20% worse than league average in 2013. A rebound in 2014 brought him to the All-Star game for the second time, but still resulted in a full-season performance that was slightly below-average. Montero had turned 31 in July and was owed $40 million over the next three seasons thanks to a contract extension he had previously signed with the Diamondbacks. For a team that was positioning itself for a longer-term rebuild, there was logic in moving on, though the Diamondbacks claimed that any move they made “ha[d] to better [their] rotation.”
The Diamondbacks acquired two pitchers from Chicago for Montero, though neither seemed to fit the criteria of bettering the Arizona rotation in 2015. The one with zero chance was Jeferson Mejia, who had just finished his first season of stateside minor league baseball. He would spend his 2015 at A ball and would never reach a level higher than that in his career, though we didn’t know the last part at the time. Zack Godley’s odds of starting an MLB game in 2015 were at least non-zero – he had started his final two years at the University of Tennessee and had already made it to Hi-A in 2014. But Godley was still three levels away from the majors and had exclusively worked from the bullpen since being drafted, with just 55.1 innings thrown in the 40 appearances he made in 2014. The odds weren’t zero, but they were probably closer to zero than one percent. It seemed more likely that Mejia would impact the rotation someday in the future, with Godley profiling as nearer to present-day middle relief help.
The results of this trade played out in stages. At first, Miguel Montero loved being a Cub and experienced an offensive bounceback in 2015 even as he missed some time with injuries. Zack Godley, improbably, did impact the Diamondbacks rotation, starting the season at Hi-A, moving up to AA, and then rocketing past AAA to make six starts and three relief appearances in his Arizona debut. Still, the results looked favorable for Chicago, and that became somewhat inarguable in 2016. Godley threw 74.2 bad MLB innings, mostly from the bullpen, while Miguel Montero hit a go-ahead grand slam in Game 1 of the NLCS and recorded the final RBI in Game 7 of the Cubs’ first World Series championship in 108 years. The Cubs acquired a legitimate postseason hero for a franchise that hadn’t had one since the days of Merkle’s Boner, which in some sense should end further conversation about this trade.
But we don’t call it Trades Two Years Later. The players’ careers continued, and the events of 2017 almost became enough to change the conversation completely. The Zack Godley explanation was straightforward – he started pitching very well, inducing a lethal combination of softly hit ground balls and swings and misses from the batters he faced. Godley threw 155 innings that year and was worth 4.2 WAR, which ranked in the top 10 among National League pitchers. He was still only 27 years old and seemed to have a more promising future in front of him than anybody expected at the time of the trade.
During June of that same year, one-time hero Miguel Montero flamed out from Chicago in bizarre fashion. Montero entered a June 27th game with one baserunner being caught in 25 stolen base attempts against him, and Montero had absolutely nothing to do with that one runner being caught. According to Statcast data, Montero’s catcher pop time ranked in the 2nd percentile. The Nationals evidently got this scouting report and proceeded to abuse Montero on the basepaths. Leadoff hitter Trea Turner hit an infield single, stole 2nd and 3rd, and then scored to commence the suffering. Turner stole 2nd and 3rd again in the 3rd inning, then scored on a throwing error, then watched from the batter’s box as another run scored on Montero’s throwing error when he tried to catch Michael Taylor stealing third base. Montero was pulled from the game after six innings, by which time seven runners had stolen bases. After the game, Montero threw Arrietta under the bus to reporters in particularly egregious fashion. “It really sucked, because the stolen bases go on me. But when you really look at it, the pitcher doesn’t give me any time, so yeah, ‘Miggy can’t throw anyone out,’ but my pitchers don’t hold anyone on.”
There is a limit to which you should be honest when sharing your feelings with the media, and that limit gets dramatically lower when evidence indicates you’re actively deflecting about something that is in fact your fault. It’s hard to fathom how ripping your pitchers in public would have been helpful in any universe, and in this universe, the Cubs designated Montero for assignment the very next morning. Suddenly, the Cubs had given away a quickly blossoming pitcher to pick up a clubhouse cancer who certainly wasn’t going to help win any future World Series. Was it still going to end up worth it?
Yes, definitely worth it. We don’t call it Trades Threes Years Later, either. Godley’s 2017 stands out as one of the past decade’s more distinct one-hit wonders; a baffling 4.2 WAR season in a career worth 1.4. He was bad in every subsequent MLB season, with the false promise of that magical year extending his career for much longer than the rest of it merited. You’d rather have Miguel Montero’s contributions in the 2016 postseason, followed by combustion, than the arcane experience of Zack Godley’s 2017, surrounded by disappointment. The Diamondbacks tried to make Godley work until they gave up and he was placed on waivers midway through the 2019 season. After skipping through AAA on his way to the majors, he’s had plenty of experience pitching for AAA teams in the 2020s.
December 10, 2014
Pittsburgh Pirates receive: Antonio Bastardo
Philadelphia Phillies receive: Joely Rodriguez
This is a swap of two relief pitchers with basically non-overlapping careers and names that outpunch their career contributions. On one side, we have Antonio Bastardo. Antonio Bastardo’s last name was (and is) “Bastardo,” which was (and is) self-evident in its humor. On the other, we have Joely Rodriguez. There are plenty of Joels in baseball, but only one who adopts the generally common (rare to “Joel”) diminutive of throwing a “y” at the end. If a guy named Joe Wendle can become a Joey, why don’t any Joels become Joelys? And yet I can’t even link to the Baseball Reference search results for “Joely” like I did for “Joel,” because when you search “Joely” you just get redirected to Joely Rodriguez’s page.
Anyways, we’ll go in chronological order and start with Antonio Bastardo. Bastardo made his MLB debut in 2009 with a great start against the Padres, followed that up with an okay start against the Dodgers, then made three quite bad starts before spending the remainder of his career as a reliever. Bastardo experienced quite a bit of year-to-year inconsistency, with strong years in 2011 and 2013 interspersed with mediocre seasons in 2010 and 2012. Part of that volatility could’ve been the steroids, as Bastardo received a 50-game suspension during the 2013 season when he was implicated in the Biogenesis scandal. This made 2014 something of a bounceback year, and Bastardo performed roughly in the midpoint of his good and bad years, with enough strikeouts to justify rolling the dice on in a trade.
Joely Rodriguez had joined the Pirates in 2009 and had reached as high as AA in 2014. Most of his minor league performances had been forgettable, but his performance in the 2014 Arizona Fall League was solid enough to place him on league-wide radars. The Phillies were leaning into a rebuild that everyone knew would take multiple years, but didn’t have super-high expectations for their trade return for one year of Antonio Bastardo. Phillies fans, surely impacted by their pessimistic experience as 76ers fans in 2014, were eager to see their franchise torn down. Pirates fans didn’t think Joely Rodriguez was very good and accordingly had no qualms with the acquisition of Bastardo, whom the team had pursued since the trade deadline.
Before the Bastardo/Joely swap was confirmed, there was a rumored swap of Bastardo for Red Sox prospect Sean Coyle. I’ve never heard of Coyle, who had played in AA during the 2014 season, but based on the incredulous reaction from fans who thought this was “too good to be true” it seems this might have been a Phillies-planted smokescreen. Coyle would end up peaking at AAA over the next two seasons, failing to reach a .200 batting average in either stint. Too good to be true, indeed.
Bastardo pitched well in his one season in Pittsburgh, keeping his ERA at a tidy 2.98 as he entered free agency. Once he got there, he signed a two-year contract for $12 million with the Mets, then got traded back to the Pirates at the trade deadline. Bastardo made a few bad appearances in 2017 before he was placed on the injured list with a quad strain and eventually designated for assignment. While attempting a comeback in the minor leagues, he received another suspension for the use of performance-enhancing drugs, this one lasting 140 games. We have not received any substantive updates on Antonio Bastardo since this 2018 suspension was announced and I’m not sure that he’s been back on an MLB roster to actually start serving that suspension.
In hindsight, I regret discussing Antonio Bastardo’s career in any depth beyond dropping the name “Antonio Bastardo” and will try to learn the same lesson with Joely Rodriguez, who we’ll hear from in the future as a result of his two subsequent trades (and counting). Rodriguez made his debut with the Phillies in 2016, then pitched terribly out of the bullpen in 2017. In Joely’s meager defense, his season numbers are dragged down by one horrid outing where he allowed seven runs and only got two outs, but that outing featured a three-run home run from Ryan Rua and Nomar Mazara reaching base twice, so this is really meant more as an exposition than a “defense.” Joely has been worth -1.5 WAR (and counting) for the five teams he’s played for in his career.