dredeye
BJ Elitist/Hipster
- Mar 3, 2008
- 27,115
- 2,805
They really didn't. They were hamstrung by the fact that Doc basically dictated he was going to Philly, so the Phillies were under no obligation to have to bid any higher than they felt comfortable doing. ahead of the trade, these were the prospect rankings for those players:
John Sickels of Minor League Ball (this is his list for the 2009 season published in 2008. His list for the off-season of the trade was done after the trade was made)
Taylor: 2nd
d'Arnaud: 3rd
Drabek: 11th (with a disclaimer about his pedigree creating the possibility that he could rise)
Also for fun, notice JA Happ in there at #5
Baseball America 2010 (courtesy of The Baseball Cube)
Drabek: 2nd (25th in MLB)
Taylor: 3rd (29th in MLB)
d'Arnaud: 4th (81st in MLB)
Baseball Prospectus
Taylor: 2nd (called a 4-star prospect)
Drabek: 3rd (4-star prospect)
d'Arnaud: 4th (3-star prospect)
in their write-ups below, Taylor is given the ceiling of an everyday RF with an all-around bat and a floor of being a Quad-A player (which might have even been a touch generous), Drabek was considered to be a Scott Kazmir type at best and a non-starter at worst (that was even more generous) d'Arnaud was considered to be at best an above-average catcher on both sides of the plate and at worst a d-first backup whose unimpressive power would make him average-at-best overall. (this might've ended up the most correct on the low-end as his career seems to have been passable D and disappointing to good-for-a-catcher offence)
So looking at it in the context of the time, the Jays got a trio of top 10 (and in most cases top 5) Phillies system guys who were by at least one measure, all also top 100 MLB prospects too.
The failure of this trade has as much to do with how much of a crapshoot prospects are. The jays rolled the dice on 3 high-level prospects in the Phillies system, each of which came with some manner of pedigree that would suggest potential impact futures (Drabek's draft status and lineage, Taylor's breakout low-minors performance, d'Arnaud's high upside and positional-value-added potential) and all 3 struck out.
And even if we suggest that the Jays just choked it and picked the wrong prospects to bet on in the Philly system, the rest of their BA top 10 from that off-season were:
1) Domonic Brown: The Phils' top prospect and seemingly off the table from the get-go, he floundered his way to a disappointingly mediocre career that included a 2016 stop in Buffalo before spending the last several years in Mexico
5) Trevor May: A bust as a starter, he's spent most of the last 4 years as a good-but-not-great member of the Twins bullpen, putting up solid numbers but never getting the call to pick up more than a couple of saves (and I'm not saying this to validate closer fetishizing, just that the reality of that behaviour means that most top-shelf relievers find their way into that role, so it becomes a good separator for highly-regarded guys vs less-regarded faceless middle relief pitchers)
6) Anthony Gose: Toronto was allegedly rebuffed in their attempts to have Gose included as a member of the Halladay package (with no indication given as to whom it would've been in place of) but got their man during the next season by flipping Brett Wallace (in turn acquired from Oakland for Michael Taylor not long after the Doc Deal) to the Astros after Gose ended up there for Roy Oswalt (confused yet?) We all know what happened here. All the speed in the world and an absolute cannon of an arm, but an over-aggressive, strikeout-heavy approach at the plate and he was left to try (and mostly fail) to reinvent himself as a fireballing reliever, currently languishing at AA in the Cleveland system where he can't strike guys out but walks everybody
7) Sebastian Valle: Once though to be a promising catching prospect, it was quickly discovered that he couldn't even hit low minors pitching, let alone have a chance against guys in the big leagues. Iffy defence also prevented him from having something to fall back on and after only flashing the most meager of results in a couple of brief AAA stints he bounced between 3 organizations in like 2 and a half years before now residing in Mexico (where his apparent unimpressiveness continues to this day)
8) Jarred Cosart: dealt to Houston in 2011 as the price for deadline acquisition Hunter Pence, Cosart pitched to a shiny mirage of a 1.95 ERA in 10 2013 starts before mostly crashing back to earth as an OK 4/5 starter in 2014, at which point he publicly bashed the Astros management group, leading to them basically banishing him to Miami as part of a trade for Jake Marisnick and Colin Moran. He was good for 10 starts in that first partial season as a Marlin before he sucked in 2015 and 2016 until the Marlins traded him in the shotgun of youngsters (featuring Canada's own Josh Naylor) for Andrew Cashner. He then sucked the rest of the year for the Padres, sucked in 24 innings in 2017, took his release upon being outrighted off the 40-man, and hasn't been seen since.
9) Antonion Bastardo: a great name and possibly the 2nd most successful guy on this list, having turned out 6 or 7 very solid seasons as a non-closer reliever with the Phillies before he appears to have hit the reliever wall in a short stint with Pittsburgh in 2017 where he was beyond brutal. And hasn't been seen since. So really, complimenting his success seems like kind of a backhanded bit of praise.
10) Domingo Santana: Also part of the Hunter Penc acquisition with Jarred Cosart, Santana looks like the clear winner of "who had the best career to-date of this prospect pool" race. He's spent the last 5 years as a somewhat above average offensive OF who plays varying degrees of questionable defence. He had a breakout 2017 with the Brewers but has since regressed back more in line with his norms before last year putting up pretty good numbers (770 OPS, 21 HR, horrifying 32% k-rate) with the Mariners while playing a very nice 121 games (and the absolute worst defensive rating of his career).
So the Jays whiffed on the prospects they took from the Phillies, but really if they had taken literally anything else from the presumptive top 10 of their system at that point the best they could've hoped for was a solid non-closer reliever and a guy who may or may not be Teoscar Hernandez in disguise.
As much as we talk about relief pitchers being witchcraft or voodoo, baseball prospects are not far behind. I'll bet for every amazing haul a team's gotten in flipping an established star for prospects, you can find 3-5 hilariously bad end results where all the shiny new toys ended up being broken or cheap knockoffs (or whatever else you can use to keep this metaphor going)
I'm not absolving Anthopoulos from all blame for the fact that the Doc deal failed. He bears the brunt of the fact that he flipped the chain of pieces from that trade and its follow-ups multiple times and basically every single one of the guys who passed through the org in that line has been an abject failure of an MLB player. But if we're just looking at the Doc Deal itself as a move made in the context of December 2009 and the deal that was made between Philadelphia and Toronto, he probably did the best he could've given the situation and given the belief at that time of what the prospects acquired were.
In fact, here's a Wilner piece from 4 years ago in which he looks at several similar ace-pitcher-for-prospect trades and their end results. the long-and-short of it?
Feb 2008: Minnesota trades Johan Santana to the Mets. In hindsight their return (Phil Humber, Carlos Gomez, Deolis Guerra, and Kevin Mulvey) was mostly crap as the only good player in that mix (Gomez) they traded in a string of deals that netted them a guy they waived and another that never played for them.
Jul 2008: Cleveland trades CC Sabathia to Milwaukee for a bunch of eventual garbage (centerpiece Matt LaPorta was an atomic bomb of a failure) and a PTBNL. This is one of those rare times you can say that a PTBNL turned out to be worthwhile as it was Michael Brantley, who has alternated bursts of stardom with being hurt a lot.
Jul 2010: Houston trades Roy Oswalt to Philly. As noted before, the return included Anthony Gose along with JA Happ and Jonathan Villar. They turned Gose into Brett Wallace, who sucked. Happ was later traded to the Jays in 2012 for a mostly crap return where the most notable pieces still in the bigs are Asher Wojciechowski and Joe Musgrove. Villar is an occasionally good middle infielder who also sucks sometimes.
Dec 2010: Kansas City trades Zack Greinki to Milwaukee for an actually good haul that was a decent part of them winning the World Series, including Lorenzo Cain, Alcides Escobar, Jake Odorizzi (who was flipped to Tampa for James Shields and Wade Davis) and Jeremy Jeffress.
3 times in a year: Cliff lee was traded. In order 1) from Cleveland to Philly for Carlos Carrasco and junk 2) from Philly to Seattle for disappointing Canadians Phil Aumont and Tyson Gilles along with JC Ramirez, all of whom floundered. 3) from Seattle to Texas for Justin Smoak (who, at the time, sucked), mediocre relievers, and junk.
The moral of the story is: big trades for prospects are basically russian roulette. Of the 7 other trades I listed above, only one of them really amounted to anything for the team that got the prospects. The others were somewhere between disappointing and complete failure. So in the end the Jays aren't alone in seeing their Halladay return vaporize to no great effect.
holy hell Nem you went all out. I had no issue with the return at the time and with all things considered they did pretty well. As is often the case with baseball the prospects unfortunately flamed out. Drabek look like a good bet and did get a taste in the show. 2nd tj ended it for him essentially. Can’t predict that. Gose many of us were excited about but he never panned out. Turned into Travis who was great for a brief time until injuries caught up with him. D’Arnaud has had a pretty good mlb career all things considered.
Again if not for injury he may have been really good.
The Marlins and Mets trades were easily AA’s worst.
