Trades Ten Years Later - Nathan Karns for Jose Lobaton; Felipe Rivero; Drew Vettleson
With meaningful cameos from Aaron Nola, Josh Hader, Koji Uehara, and A$AP Ferg.
The Names: Tampa Bay Rays receive: Nathan Karns. Washington Nationals receive: Jose Lobaton, Felipe Rivero, Drew Vettleson.
The Team Context: Apparently I wrote about the Tampa Bay Rays less than a month ago? My mind is so full of NBA trades that I would’ve guessed that was in 2023.
For the entire existence of the Washington Nationals, and most of the final years of their predecessor Montreal Expos, they were atrocious. The Expos essentially never recovered fan support after a 1995 fire sale where they sold off all their good players, with relocation becoming so clearly inevitable that MLB purchased control of the team ahead of the 2002 season for the first time in league history and had them play 22 home games in San Juan. The Montreal stragglers that started play as the 2005 Washington Nationals played well enough to finish 81-81, but unfortunately for them that was a last-place finish in the weirdly competitive NL East. America’s newest baseball team proceeded to get worse and bottomed out with two consecutive 59-win seasons in 2008 and 2009. Fortunately, the Nationals had timed their worst seasons with the draft years of two of the sports’ most-heralded amateur prospects, Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper. With surefire first overall picks in the 2009 and 2010 drafts, the Nationals steadily improved to 69 wins in 2010, 80 wins in 2011, and 98 in 2012.
There were a few items on the Nationals’ to-do list to patch up the holes of a roster that scuffled surprisingly in 2013, with fans identifying another starting pitcher, a bench bat, and a lefty reliever as the three key items to acquire. Fans were therefore willing to declare the offseason complete on December 11, 2013 following the acquisitions of Doug Fister, Nate McLouth, and Jerry Blevins.
The Player Context: Nathan Karns was drafted by the Nationals in the 12th round of the 2009 draft and “experienced a lot of turmoil” after turning pro, as a surgery on his labrum delayed his professional debut until 2011. Karns was 2.5 years older than the average player in rookie league and took advantage of his opportunities to bully comparative children, with excellent stats and gaudy strikeout totals throughout the minor leagues as he rose to become a fringe top-100 prospect. He made three starts for the MLB club in 2013 and none of them were “good,” with his best performance coming in a loss to the Braves where he allowed home runs to B.J. Upton and somebody named Ramiro Pena. Ramiro hit 8 home runs in the other 340 games of his career.
The Rays sent three guys to Washington in exchange for Karns, one of whom carried higher present value than the other two. Believe it or not, that guy was Jose Lobaton. Lobaton took a winding road to the MLB that began when he signed with the San Diego Padres in May of 2002. He moved up about one minor league level per season, performing as a fine-not-great hitter at each step along the way. Typically, guys who don’t crush it in the minor leagues won’t keep up at all in the majors, which Jose Lobaton demonstrated in his first 17 MLB plate appearances as a 2009 Padre. He had three hits, five strikeouts, and no other meaningful statistical output before he was designated for assignment in July. The Rays claimed Lobaton on waivers and reverted him to minor league status for the rest of the 2009 season, all of the 2010 season, and most of the 2011 season until he was allowed to resurface as a September call-up.
Lobaton distinguished himself as a decent backup catcher in 2012, getting into 69 games at the MLB level, then elevated further in 2013 as an injury to starter Jose Molina gave Lobaton an extended run of play. He had a knack for big moments in 2013, including a rarely-seen walk-off triple in August that he followed with an extra-inning walk-off home run two days later. But neither of these are what comes to mind when someone says “Jose Lobaton 2013 walk-off” – the generic version of the term should be understood to refer to Game 3 of the American League Division Series. Facing Red Sox reliever Koji Uehara at the peak of his powers, Lobaton managed to take an incredible pitch and somehow launch a towering shot into the fish tank full of stingrays at Tropicana Field. The Red Sox went on to eliminate the Rays and win the World Series, which really just makes Lobaton’s performance more impressive; Uehara pitched 13.2 innings in that postseason and Lobaton’s bomb is the only run he allowed.
Each of the other players going to Washington was a yet-to-debut prospect. The better-regarded of the two, at first, was Drew Vettleson. Vettleson posted strong numbers in his senior year at Central Kitsap high school in Washington, hitting .490 with seven home runs. Like many great high-school players, Vettleson was a two-way player who was also the Central Kitsap ace. His fastball, change-up, and knuckle curve propelled him to a 1.35 ERA and 71 strikeouts on the season. Unlike almost every great player, at any level, Vettleson could throw those pitches with either his right or left hand. He would throw into the 90s from the right side, then switch to his slightly-slower left-handed arsenal to rest his right arm and baffle whichever poor high school he was facing. Obviously that’s a cool enough gimmick to warrant the first-round pick the Rays used on him in the 2010 Draft, even if Vettleson never pitched professionally. As an outfielder, Vettleson was hitting well enough to earn promotions through the Rays minor league systems, but less and less so each year. His power disappeared almost entirely in 2013 as he slugged just .388 for the Hi-A Charlotte Stone Crabs.
Felipe Rivero had started with less prospect hype but had a better directional trend. Vettleson and Rivero were ranked the Rays #9 and #10 prospects (respectively) prior to the 2013 season but then ranked as the Nationals #8 and #5 prospects (respectively) prior to the 2014 season. Rivero had struggled with control in the minors but still seemed to have starting pitcher potential, throwing 113.1 innings in 2012 and 127.0 in 2013.
The Trade: Sam Miller wrote one of the inner-circle Hall of Fame baseball tweets in response to the Rays trade we discussed in January. “LOVE this trade for the Rays. Who’d they give up? And who’d they get?”. The Alex Torres/Logan Forsythe trade was the final time we didn’t have words to contextualize this observable phenomenon; from this trade and onwards, we could (and did) just refer back to the Sam Miller tweet.
The reason we love this trade for the Rays, regardless of any other fundamental information, is that they seem to have an unrivaled knack for buying low and selling high. For a team that has been so consistently competitive as Tampa Bay, it is surprisingly difficult to think of Rays that are unambiguously “good players” for their careers outside of Evan Longoria and maybe David Price and Ben Zobrist – absolutely everyone else can point to some sort of existential flaw, typically one that cropped up after they left town. But somehow, most guys can put together a great season or two in Tampa Bay. The players don’t matter because the players joining Tampa Bay tend to be good and the players leaving tend to be bad, regardless of who the actual players are.
Jose Lobaton could be placed in an aesthetically-pleasing box. In what was still his first real crack against MLB pitching, here was a switch-hitting catcher who could hit at around a league-average level and would have a cost-controlled salary for the next four years. Some teams would love to have that on their roster, but some teams would rather sell it high. Naturally, the Rays had identified Lobaton as a “possible trade chip” by mid-December. By February 5, talks for Jose Lobaton were “heating up” as up to six teams vied for his services and by February 12, these two teams were “talking again” about a Lobaton for Karns structure.
On February 9, Nathan Karns tweeted “On my way to Florida!”. He was talking about the Nationals’ spring training site, but imagine if you didn’t know that.
The first trade report came on the morning of February 13 as Bill Ladson reported that “Jose Lobotan” was traded for Nathan Karns, making no mention of other players. A few minutes later, Marc Topkin was able to supplement with the information that “two others” would be going to Washington. These two reports lived in opposition for some time. About an hour after that, Adam Kilgore had gained the additional detail to confirm that there were two others and “both are ranked in BA’s top 30 Rays list,” and two minutes after THAT, Chris Cotillo added that Felipe Rivero was going to Washington. This left just one “other” to be identified.
The Reaction: Drew Vettleson was really active on Twitter as a minor leaguer. The day before the trade, he posted a line from A$AP Ferg’s “Work (Remix)” with the hashtag #Ferg and got three likes (perhaps the most archetypal 2014 tweet I could’ve conjured). His first post-trade tweet was “Excited to be apart (sic) of the Washington Nationals organization! I’m thankful for this opportunity and can’t wait to get started #Nationals” and his next three tweets are “thank you!” replies to the random Nationals fans saying congratulations.
Reddit user DemonFrog posted news of the trade to /r/baseball, then provided 13 of the 42 comments that the news generated. Part of the equation is nobody else caring about this trade, but in fairness to DemonFrog, we saw above that breaking this trade in its entirety required the work of four reporters over the course of hours and a lot of his comments are just straightening out the record.
Through my research and lived experience I’m able to say with confidence why the reporting lagged. The Nationals and Rays finalized the terms of this trade at a fairly reasonable hour in the eastern time zone. Pitchers and catchers for the Nationals had reported that day, so Nathan Karns had just started his first workday of the season when his bosses told him that he’d spend the day moving to his new job in Tampa Bay instead. Bill Ladson posted his tweet at 10:03 AM, EST and the rest of the Twitter calvary followed in the next hour and a half. Meanwhile, Drew Vettleson was enjoying the final week of his offseason at home in Washington state, sleeping peacefully when his phone started to ring shortly before 7 AM PST. News that Vettleson would be involved in the trade didn’t start coming out until about 10:50 AM PST, when Vettleson posted his first tweet acknowledging it. They didn’t want to leak his name until he woke up and heard from them personally.
It’s a little deflating to find an article from 119 months ago where Vettleson explicitly confirms this series of events after I’ve already done the writing that made a big show of theorizing it. At least I was right?
Finally, to be even more kind to DemonFrog in consideration of their valuable reporting ten years ago, I’ll link the comment that suggests converting Felipe Rivero to the bullpen as an obvious answer.
The Results: Do we really need to check on this one? The Rays always win these. Nathan Karns put up 2.0 WAR over the next two seasons with the Rays and Jose Lobaton turned into a pumpkin with the Nationals, finishing his MLB career with negative WAR despite the positive 1.3 cushion he had built in Tampa Bay. Karns even took Lobaton’s flashy home run power, hitting his one MLB home run (and only MLB hit) in an interleague game to spoil what was otherwise an awesome major league debut from Aaron Nola. The Rays beat the Phillies, 1-0. The Rays traded Karns to Seattle after 2015 (LOVED that trade for the Rays) and he was bad or injured for the remainder of his MLB career.
Drew Vettleson spent the next three seasons as a Nationals minor leaguer, but never made it past AA and was released after the 2016 season. For some reason it doesn’t seem like he ever revisited his ability to throw three pitches with both of his arms.
Fortunately, FOR PURPOSES OF THIS SECTION, the acquisition of Felipe Rivero salvaged things somewhat for the Nationals. After spending 2014 as a starter once again but pitching fewer innings as he suffered from elbow inflammation, the Nationals finally listened to DemonFrog and made Rivero a reliever. In the bullpen, Rivero could suddenly touch 102 mph with his fastball and quickly became useful at the MLB level, with 1.1 WAR in his rookie season. Rivero took a bit of a step back in 2016, but was still well-regarded enough in this new form to headline a trade package for Pittsburgh closer Mark Melancon at the deadline. If we add in Melancon’s 1.2 WAR as a National to Rivero’s 1.1, and ignore all the reasons this is stupid, the Nationals may have an argument for winning the trade!
The Aftermath: Let’s be super clear though – the Nationals would never make the argument that they won this trade by virtue of acquiring Felipe Rivero. For one, Rivero elevated his game substantially in Pittsburgh to become one of the best relievers in baseball. He underwent two identity changes, picking up the nickname “Nightmare” and then changing his uniform name to Felipe Vasquez as a tribute to his sister. Vasquez made the All-Star Game in each of 2018 and 2019, long after Mark Melancon’s Washington tenure was a distant memory, as he became a consensus top-five relief pitcher in baseball. The Nationals would never point out their acquisition of Felipe Rivero as a win, especially if it required bundling in Mark Melancon’s value, because their loss of Felipe Vasquez was such a defeat.
There is a much more salient reason the Nationals would never make that argument, which you’ve either been waiting for me to mention or is about to hit you like a ton of bricks. Vasquez’s 2019 season and MLB career ended when he was arrested on September 17, 2019 on a variety of charges that all boil down to having an ongoing sexual relationship with a girl who was 13 when the relationship started and 15 at the time of the arrest. She was 17 when she testified against him at his 2021 trial, which ultimately resulted in 15 convictions and a sentence of two to four years in Pennsylvania state prison. Vasquez was deported to Venezuela in December 2023 following the completion of his sentence.
There’s really no good conversational pivot back to baseball from that, so here’s hoping the buffer of this filler sentence helps. Drew Vettleson did not turn out to be an MLB-caliber baseball player, which is really not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. After leaving the Nationals’ minor league system in 2016, Vettleson signed with the Rangers and played 26 more games in AA before he was released on May 25. He hasn’t been on Twitter since 2020 (posting one basketball-related tweet in each of January, April, and August), so his bio still says he is 28 years old. Vettleson was inducted into the Kitsap Sports Hall of Fame in January of 2023 and looks pretty happy in this picture from the induction ceremony, even if there’s not much record online of what he’s up to.
After leaving the Nationals in 2017, Jose Lobaton entered the phase of his career where he was considered “among the better insurance policies in the game” as he inked a minor-league deal with the Mets that resulted in 57 MLB plate appearances. Lobaton played in the minors with the Mariners, Dodgers, and Cubs before finally returning to Chicago’s MLB roster in 2021. This MLB stint would be his last and only lasted 13 plate appearances, none of which included a hit. In his 13th (hmmm) plate appearance, Lobaton grounded to the right side and raced down the line to try for an infield single. Josh Hader, attempting to cover the first base bag, slipped and frantically reached back to tag the base. Lobaton simultaneously accelerated on the close play while adjusting his approach to avoid stomping on the sprawled out Hader, creating a physics problem that proved unsolvable as he plunged to the dirt and separated his shoulder on impact. Lobaton was out, the ninth inning was over, and the Cubs had lost, 2-1. He went on the 60-day injured list the next day and never played baseball again.
Nathan Karns was surprisingly close to the end of his career after leaving Tampa Bay at the age of 28. He threw 94.1 unremarkable innings for Seattle in 2016, 45.1 intriguing innings for Kansas City in 2017 that preceded surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome in July, and zero innings in 2018 due to ominous “right elbow inflammation.” He closed things out with 5.1 shutout innings for Baltimore in four 2019 appearances between March 30 and April 8, with his last MLB appearance coming in the 9th inning of a 12-4 Orioles win over the Oakland A’s. Karns needed just ten pitches to retire Robbie Grossman, Matt Chapman, and Stephen Piscotty, then was placed on the injured list with a forearm strain and released later that season. He is now a realtor with Rogers Healy and Associates in Dallas, where he’s recently sold two lovely homes in Southlake for over $1 million each.
Miscellaneous: The Washington Nationals and Montreal Expos both have .484 all-time win percentages. The Expos GM who orchestrated the team’s fire sale got fired from the same job with the Dodgers when he yelled “what do you know, Mouth” at a Padres fan who was heckling Gary Sheffield. Lobaton has 1145 MLB at bats yet played MLB baseball in three decades; all but 28 of the at-bats were in the 2010s. The 2011 Nationals were 80-81 but probably could’ve gone 81-81 based on their superior lineup in their rained out matchup against the Dodgers. Jose Lobaton got married at Tropicana Field and started a game for Tampa Bay that same evening, then about 18 months later the Rays traded him. Devan Fink, former Fangraphs writer and current Baltimore Orioles front office employee, conducted a super boring day-of-trade interview with Drew Vettleson which is only notable because Fink was literally like 12 years old at the time. On January 6, 2014, Nathan Karns tweeted “Rt if you’ve had a #Twinkie in the past 24hrs!” and got 0 retweets. Jose Lobaton hasn’t tweeted since April 2018 and is still wearing a Rays uniform in his picture.
February 14, 2024:
San Antonio Spurs receive: Austin Daye
Toronto Raptors receive: Nando de Colo
February 15, 2024:
Denver Nuggets receive: Aaron Brooks
Houston Rockets receive: Jordan Hamilton
February 16, 2024:
Charlotte Bobcats receive: Gary Neal, Luke Ridnour
Milwaukee Bucks receive: Ramon Sessions, Jeff Adrien