Trades Ten Years Later - Mark Trumbo to the Diamondbacks for Adam Eaton and Tyler Skaggs
ARI receives: Mark Trumbo and A.J. Schugel (from LAA) and Brandon Jacobs (from CHW). LAA receives: Tyler Skaggs (from ARI) and Hector Santiago (from CHW). CHW receives Adam Eaton (from ARI).
Welcome back to the early launch of “Trades Ten Years Later,” the world’s most self-explanatory sports blog! This second post features a trade with a lot of interesting pieces, which led to us being one day late. Apologies for any inconvenience this has caused. A schedule for this week (featuring some lovely and relaxing two-team, player-for-player trades) can be found at the end of the post.
Aiming to be set up for a full launch by the end of December. Subscribe prior to 2024 to be a permanent member of the “Early Launch Group!”
The Names: Arizona Diamondbacks receive: Mark Trumbo and A.J. Schugel (from LAA) and Brandon Jacobs (from CHW). Los Angeles Angels receive: Tyler Skaggs (from ARI) and Hector Santiago (from CHW). Chicago White Sox receive: Adam Eaton (from ARI).
The Team Context: The Diamondbacks were coming off a frustrating season. The team had won the NL West 5 times in the 16 seasons since their establishment as an expansion franchise in 1998, including as recently as 2011, and led the division for most of the first half of 2013. But the Los Angeles Dodgers had just been purchased the prior season by Guggenheim Baseball Management, a new ownership group with deep pockets which immediately started spending. The Dodgers were impossibly good in the second-half of 2013, going 42-8 between June 22 and August 17. On July 22, the Dodgers took control of the division for good and on September 19, the Dodgers beat the Diamondbacks in Chase Field to clinch the NL West and eliminate Arizona from playoff contention. Dodgers players celebrated by leaping into the in-stadium pool at Chase Field, an act that drew criticism from each of Diamondbacks president Derrick Hall, Diamondbacks player Willie Bloomquist, and Arizona Senator John McCain. After the season, Arizona GM Kevin Towers fired pitching coach Charles Nagy and first base coach Steve Sax, then publicly linked the move to the team’s perceived lack of toughness. Specifically, he took issue with a failure to retaliate with violence by his pitching staff following a Paul Goldschmidt hit-by-pitch, saying “if Goldy’s getting hit, it’s an eye for an eye, somebody’s going down or somebody’s going to get jackknifed.”
Things were not much more optimistic for the Los Angeles Angels (still regrettably named the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim at the time of the trade). The Angels had won at least 80 games every season since 2004, but dipped below that total to finish 78-84 in 2013. Their pitching was threadbare, with an all-30s rotation of C.J. Wilson, Jered Weaver, Jason Vargas, Jerome Williams, and Joe Blanton pitching at varying levels of unimpressive, mediocre, and appalling - and Vargas and Williams were out of contract, leaving the exciting but unreliable 25-year old Garrett Richards to step in. On offense, their 21-year old superstar, Mike Trout, continued to perform at an impossible level after a shocking 2012 rookie season, but once again failed to receive MVP recognition as he finished 2nd in voting to Miguel Cabrera for a consecutive year. Trout put up a robust 8.9 Wins Above Replacement (rWAR), but only one other hitter on his team exceeded 2.0 for the season (Howie Kendrick; 3.6). Aging stars Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton, brought in as free agents in the last two offseasons, were beginning to enter protracted and sudden decline periods, respectively. The GM who oversaw these signings, Jerry Dipoto, was in his third offseason in charge after previously working in Arizona’s front office, including as interim general manager. Despite rumors floating around the job security of Dipoto and manager Mike Scioscia at the beginning of the offseason, the pair was retained for 2015.
Rounding out the tragic trio was the actual worst team of the bunch, the Chicago White Sox. While never the same force as they were in their 2005 World Series year, the early-2010s White Sox had flitted between mediocrity and contention much like the teams above. This continued in 2013 until June, when the team decided it would be easier to just suck entirely. A 24-28 record on May 31 metastasized to 32-47 on June 30 and 40-65 on July 31, culminating in an unsightly 63-99 record that was good for (bad for?) third-worst in baseball. The pitching staff was more than adequate, led by the 24-year old duo of Chris Sale and Jose Quintana. The hitters were worse than terrible. The White Sox scored 598 runs in 2013, the least of any AL team (and fewer than every NL team except the fire-sold Miami Marlins despite the advantage of a designated hitter). They couldn’t play defense either, with the 2nd-worst fielding in baseball by errors and advanced metrics. The bright side for general manager Rick Hahn, who had just been hired ahead of the 2013 season, was that the target for improvement was quite clear and expansive.
The Player Context: The senior player in the deal was 27-year old Angels slugger Mark Trumbo. Trumbo finished second in rookie of the year voting in 2011 and made his first All-Star Game in 2012, lighting up Los Angeles of Anaheim with his power. But by 2013, a baseball nation that increasingly thought about advanced metrics when they looked at the Angels noticed the flaws in Trumbo’s game. His rWAR had declined in these three seasons from 2.9 to 2.3 to 1.7 and his difficulties in the outfield left him best-suited for a 1B/DH role. With Pujols and Hamilton in the fold, Trumbo was a poor fit on the Angels roster and had been a fixture in trade rumors.
The remaining named players were each young guys with MLB experience that allowed for either a glass half-empty or half-full view. The Diamondbacks had elected the half-empty view for each of their pieces. 25-year old Adam Eaton played college baseball at Miami University (the Ohio one) and was a 19th-round draft pick in 2010 who worked his way to become the Diamondbacks’ top hitting prospect, impressing in his September 2012 MLB debut. He was penciled in to start in CF for Arizona in 2013, but an elbow injury in spring training sent his season off-course and led to doubts about whether he could really stick at the MLB level.
22-year old Tyler Skaggs was the other Diamondback, a young pitcher originally drafted by the Angels in 2009 and traded to Arizona the next year as part of a package for Dan Haren. Skaggs’ performance in the minors was exceptional and he ascended to become a top pitching prospect in baseball by 2012, but he had scuffled in his MLB appearances in each of the last two years. His velocity declined in 2013 and the organization was prepared to move on.
In total contrast to Skaggs, 25-year old Hector Santiago of the White Sox was a minor prospect who had performed admirably throughout his MLB service, first as a reliever and then increasingly as a starter. He threw 149 innings in 2013 with a 3.56 ERA, though his worryingly high-walk and low-strikeout approach made it unclear how long he could be expected to succeed. Santiago was primarily viewed as a credit to the transformative abilities of White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper.
A.J. Schugel and Brandon Jacobs were each included in the trade as players to be named later. Jacobs (not to be confused with the similarly-named NFL running back, though this one was also recruited as a running back out of high school by Auburn) was a 10th-round pick by the Boston Red Sox in 2009, then traded to the White Sox in 2013 in a deadline move for Matt Thornton. He hit well enough in A-ball in 2011 to garner some optimism about his future, but that had largely dissipated after consecutive middling seasons at Hi-A and AA. Similarly, A.J. Schugel was a 25th-round pick by the Angels in 2010 and pitched well for his first few minor league seasons, then terribly in 2013 as a blister derailed his first attempt at AAA.
The Trade: Kevin Towers showed up to the 2013 MLB Winter Meetings intent on acquiring an outfielder with thump to slot into his lineup. Due to an unusually active period of offseason activity just before the start of the meetings, Towers was left to choose between Trumbo and Shin-Soo Choo, a 31-year old free agent who had just received MVP votes in his sole season with the Reds. Towers also had an ongoing trade dialogue with Rick Hahn of the White Sox, which allowed the framework of a three-team trade to come together. Angels GM Jerry Dipoto was on a quest for young pitching and was happy to deal from a surplus of thump by offering Trumbo in exchange. Dipoto was hardly unique in coveting Skaggs, a universal top-20 prospect in baseball prior to the 2013 season, but had particular bona fides as the man who had traded for Skaggs once before, executing the Dan Haren trade while serving as Diamondbacks interim GM. Towers was willing to offer both Skaggs and Eaton in the package, but the Angels’ need for pitching led to the three-team structure where Eaton was sent to Chicago in exchange for Hector Santiago, who then went to the Angels with Skaggs. To balance out the price being paid by Arizona of two top prospects at the MLB level, each of the Angels and the White Sox included a prospect as a player to be named later (Schugel and Jacobs would each be named upon clearing the Rule 5 Draft later that week).
The Reaction: The most clear consensus on the trade was that Arizona lost. The second most-clear consensus was that Adam Eaton was a solid acquisition, leaving assessment between the White Sox and Angels to hinge on the evaluator’s opinion of the likely outcomes of Skaggs and Santiago. Keith Law, then of ESPN, called the trade “very lopsided,” designating the Diamondbacks as clear losers, Angels as “enormous” winners, and the White Sox somewhere in the middle. Jeff Sullivan, then of Fangraphs, swapped the gold and silver medals, calling the deal an “overall overrated exchange, where the White Sox do best, the Angels do fine, and the Diamondbacks confuse.” Sullivan (and several others, including Arizona writers) invoked a comparison between the Marks Trumbo and Reynolds, whose similar skillsets called the rationale of the move into question given that Mark Reynolds had been traded away by Towers in 2010 for a lesser return after hitting 76 home runs the prior two seasons.
Each fanbase was sad to see its players go, even if most understood the rationale. Angels fans were overjoyed to patch up the holes in their rotation with such compelling pieces, even if Trumbo’s bombability would be missed. White Sox fans were disappointed to see a fan favorite go in Hector Santiago, who charmed the community with his winning disposition as well as his screwball, but hoped the acquisition of Eaton would boost a disappointing offense. Diamondbacks fans were both sad to see their players go and did not understand the acquisition of Trumbo, who “doesn’t get on base and has the range of a glacier.” Volunteers offered to “get the pitchforks polished up” as they questioned what Kevin Towers could have been thinking with this move.
Adam Eaton reacted on Twitter with the Anchorman quote “Well, that escalated quickly…” though it’s not clear whether anyone told him about the pitchforks.
The Results: The popular consensus was the correct one, as the trade worked out quite poorly for Arizona. Before the end of April 2014, Mark Trumbo was sidelined with a stress fracture in his left foot, an injury that he noticed while jogging to his position between innings. He finished below replacement level in 2014 as the Diamondbacks cratered to 64-98. Trumbo’s performance picked up some in 2015, but the Diamondbacks remained out of it and traded Trumbo at the deadline to the Seattle Mariners - where new Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto scooped up the player he had dealt from Anaheim. Trumbo finished his Arizona tenure with -0.1 rWAR, with a cumulative total of 23 home runs that were fewer than in any of his seasons with the Angels.
Meanwhile, Adam Eaton immediately shook off the disappointment of 2013 to produce at a borderline star level in Chicago, drawing enough accolades as one of the “most underrated” players in baseball that he eventually became properly rated. He put up 16.0 rWAR over the next three seasons in Chicago and signed a team-friendly extension ahead of the 2015 season that made him simultaneously a great value. The additions of Eaton and Cuban slugger Jose Abreu gave the White Sox two great hitters to slot into their lineup in 2014. Unfortunately for Chicago, the team needed several additional great hitters, and the ten-win improvement that Eaton and Abreu induced only brought the team up to a still-bad 73-89. Despite the lack of winning with Eaton, the White Sox secured their victory in this trade after the 2016 season, when he was sent to the Washington Nationals for a major prospect haul of Lucas Giolato, Reynaldo Lopez, and Dane Dunning that I look forward to discussing in December 2026.
Hector Santiago proved to be an acceptable price to pay for Eaton and a great price to receive for Trumbo, as he continued to outperform his middling peripherals as a workmanlike mid-rotation starter over the next two seasons in Anaheim. He was even named to an All-Star team in 2015, an achievement that eluded the perpetually-underrated Eaton, despite finishing as a top 10 pitcher in walks allowed (71, 4th in the AL) and home runs allowed (29, 1st in the AL) that season. The charm began to wear off as Santiago’s middling peripherals became terrible peripherals and his sneaky-good outperformance became middling. Santiago’s Angels tenure ended with a trade to Minnesota at the 2016 deadline, and his career included two more free agent signings with the White Sox discussed further below.
Tyler Skaggs ultimately and tragically became perhaps the most notable player in this trade. On the field, Skaggs’ 2014 started with slightly-improved inconsistency before being derailed by Tommy John surgery. He didn’t return until 2016 and spent the next few seasons as a promising yet frustrating member of the Angels rotation, continuing to trend upwards in results even as continued injuries compromised his ability to perform. In July 2019, while on a road trip to play the Texas Rangers, Skaggs died with alcohol, fentanyl and oxycodone in his system, with the latter two found to have been provided by Angels director of communications Eric Kay.
Schugel and Jacobs, the two players to be named later in the trade, never made significant impacts in the majors despite assurances from Kevin Towers that they were “good” prospects. Jacobs played the 2014 season at Hi-A for Arizona despite playing at AA in 2013 before joining the independent leagues. Schugel pitched 9 unimpressive relief innings for Arizona in 2015 before being waived. Of the 3 players Arizona received in the deal, Jacobs produced the most rWAR for Arizona (none, compared to -0.1 for Trumbo and -0.5 for Schugel).
The Aftermath: The Diamondbacks have yet to win another NL West title, but did enact a measure of revenge against the Dodgers in the 2023 playoffs, when they celebrated an upset NLDS sweep in the Chase Field pool.
After fulfilling his best-case scenario in Chicago, Adam Eaton suffered a torn ACL almost immediately upon his arrival in Washington and was unable to contribute at the same level. In spite of that, he had his healthiest season in 2019 and played a role in the Nationals’ World Series win. Once his extension lapsed after an understandably off 2020 season, Eaton rejoined the White Sox on a one-year deal for the 2021 season. He proved to be quite completely cooked, getting released by the team in July before joining the Angels the next day. In 69 plate appearances with Anaheim to close out his MLB career, Eaton had 10 singles, 2 doubles, and one home run on his way to a .200/.277/.509 slash line. In Eaton’s final MLB at-bat, he grounded out to 2nd against Phil Maton to end the 8th inning in an 8-2 loss to the Astros. His final MLB hit came nine days (and 19 AB) earlier, hitting a bunt single in a 5-0 win over the Rangers that also included Eaton’s final MLB home run (hit against Spencer Howard).
After disappointing in Arizona and being sent to Seattle, Trumbo was traded to Baltimore ahead of the 2016 season for his final year of team control. Trumbo took a liking to Maryland, swatting an MLB-leading 47 home runs accompanied by a passable 2.1 rWAR and making another All-Star team (unlike Eaton, who put up 6.6 rWAR that season). Trumbo’s excellent timing for a breakout season led the Orioles to give him $37.5 million to re-sign for 2017-2019. Trumbo was a diminished player in 2017 and the start of 2018 before having season-ending knee injury that he never fully recovered from, making only a poor, dinger-less cameo at the end of the 2019 season. He acknowledged being in somewhat of a career limbo ahead of the 2022 season, which seems to be ongoing today. Trumbo’s final MLB appearance (for now?) was a strikeout swinging against Matt Barnes in September 2019, which stranded runners on first and third to end the 8th inning in a 4-4 game that the Orioles ultimately lost 5-4. In a fun twist, Trumbo’s final MLB home run was ALSO against Matt Barnes and was ALSO in the 8th inning of an August 2018 game that the Orioles lost 19-12 to the eventual champions.
Hector Santiago was injured in 2017 and didn’t make an appearance for Minnesota after July 2nd. He signed with the White Sox on a minor league contract for 2018 and made it to the MLB Opening Day roster, pitching out of the bullpen. After a quick stint with the Mets in 2019, Santiago once again signed a minors deal with the White Sox mid-season and was called up to the White Sox in July. Ahead of the 2020 season, Santiago sent an incredibly eager resume and cover letter to all 30 MLB teams, including unbelievably lunchpail quotes like “I’ll throw 162 games” and “Hec, can you wash the uniforms tonight? Yup. I’ll be the yes man for whoever needs me to be.” This approach obviously charmed the Upper Midwest and earned him a contract with the Tigers, but didn’t result in game time during the pandemic-altered season. Santiago worked his way back to the MLB with the Seattle Mariners in 2021, where he infamously became the first pitcher ejected for use of an illegal sticky substance following the league’s announced crackdown. Almost immediately after returning from suspension for that offense, Santiago received a further 80-game suspension following a positive test for performance-enhancing drugs. He pitched in 2023 for the Acereros de Monclove of the Mexican League and for the Leones de Ponce of the Puerto Rican Winter League. Santiago’s last MLB appearance (for now?) was in an 8-6 loss to the Astros, where he pitched two innings in relief and got his final MLB strikeout against Myles Straw.
Brandon Jacobs was released by the Diamondbacks after an entirely uninspiring 2014 season. He played a few more seasons of independent baseball, first with the Traverse City Beach Bums of the Frontier League and then with the Lincoln Saltdogs of the American Association, where he played three seasons and hit a total of 45 home runs. His final hit in affiliated baseball was a home run for the Visalia Rawhide in an 11-7 loss to the Bakersfield Blaze that he hit off Daniel Wright, a pitcher who briefly made it to MLB a couple of years later.
A.J. Schugel ended up in Pittsburgh after being waived by Arizona and produced pretty impressive numbers in limited MLB time over the 2016 and 2017 seasons. However, a shoulder injury cost him his roster spot in 2018 and led to much less impressive numbers in the minor leagues. Schugel didn’t pitch in 2019, but got back into affiliated baseball with the AAA Syracuse Mets in 2021. Besides that, he’s pitched with the American Association’s Milwaukee Milkmen (2020 and 2022) and Kane County Cougars (2023) as well as the Generales de Durango of the Mexican League (2023). Most recently, he was selected by the Karachi Monarchs with the 27th pick of the draft for Baseball United, a professional baseball league in the Middle East and South Asia that will play its first season in 2024. Schugel’s last MLB appearance (for now?) came in a 6-1 loss to the Nationals, where he relieved Gerrit Cole and got Anthony Rendon caught stealing at 3B before allowing a Ryan Zimmerman home run, Jayson Werth single, Matt Wieters walk, and getting replaced by Johnny Barbato.
Tyler Skaggs’ final MLB start was a 4-0 loss to the Oakland A’s on June 29, 2019. In his final inning of work, he gave up a leadoff walk to Jurickson Profar, balked him over to 2nd, and got a fielder’s choice from Josh Phegley before being chased by a run-scoring Marcus Semien double. His replacement, Trevor Cahill, immediately allowed a home run that scored Semien as Skaggs’ final earned run. In the Angels’ first home game after Skaggs’ passing, the entire team wore jerseys with his name and number 45 in tribute. His mother threw out the first pitch, and Angels pitchers Taylor Cole and Felix Peña combined to throw the 11th and most surreal no-hitter in Angels (and arguably baseball) history.
In October 2022, Eric Kay was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison in connection with Skaggs’ death. At his sentencing hearing, prosecutors provided recorded conversations where an incarcerated Kay insulted Skaggs and his family, saying “I hope people realize what a piece of shit he is,” and that his family “may get more money with him dead than he was playing, because he sucked.” He is incarcerated at FCI Englewood and is set to be released in January 2041.
Upcoming trades:
December 13, 2013:
Mariners receive: Logan Morrison
Marlins receive: Carter Capps
December 16, 2013:
White Sox receive: Matt Davidson
Diamondbacks receive: Addison Reed