Everyone agrees that the Angels need to trade for more offense. Of this there is no doubt. One of the most popular internet proposals for acquiring that offense is for the Angels to trade from their starting pitching depth. According to these proposals, either C.J. Wilson or Hector Santiago needs to be shipped out for a bat with Andrew Heaney coming up to take the place of Wilson or Santiago in the rotation and replicating or exceeding their productivity. It is a perfect plan!
OK, almost perfect. I don’t want to oversell it. There is one “minor” flaw in this plan in that such a trade may not actually be, you know, realistic. Sure, fans can tweet suggestions like Wilson-for-Ethier until the cows come home, but that doesn’t mean that any of the GMs involved in such a hypothetical are actually willing to pull the trigger.
So, yeah, about that. It turns out that most mid-season trades involve a contending team trading to a losing team with the contending team getting the quality veteran and the losing team getting prospects. Losing teams usually aren’t real big on acquiring veterans since that doesn’t usually help them stop losing in the long-term. Conversely, the contending team usually wants to keep as much talent as possible on the big league roster. They also don’t want to trade with other contending teams and risk strengthening the very team they might be contending against.
For those reasons there hasn’t been a lot of veteran-for-veteran swaps during the season in the last five years. In particular, there are barely any starting pitcher-for-hitter deals that have gone down since 2010. In 2011, there was the bizarre Colby Rasmus-Edwin Jackson deal. That was hardly an example of what the Angels want to do though because it involved a ton of other players, mostly relievers, and was actually a three-way trade with Jackson going from the rebuilding White Sox to the Cardinals with Rasmus going from St. Louis to Toronto. So, yeah, the right kinds of players were involved, but they weren’t going to the proper destinations.
After 2011, it was a pretty dry spell for in-season pitcher-hitter challenge trades. This would seemingly spell doom for the idea of dealing Wilson or Santiago for an outfield bat. But lo! Then 2014 cast the light of hope on this idea.
Last season, there was another complex three-way deal that saw the contending Tigers deal Austin Jackson in exchange for David Price. Like the Rasmus deal, the outfielder and starting pitcher didn’t directly trade places, so we can’t call this a true comparable even though it involved two teams that were considered contenders and one that wasn’t completely rebuilding.
A much better match for what the Angels might want to replicate can be seen in the Red Sox-Cardinals trade that saw St. Louis acquire John Lackey in exchange for Joe Kelly and the corpse of Allen Craig. This was not a one-for-one swap, but at least it is a two-team deal and involved veterans being traded for veterans.
Perhaps the best example though would be the Red Sox once again getting involved by trading Jon Lester and Jonny Gomes to the A’s for Yoenis Cespedes. Lester is a much higher caliber pitchers than what the Angels have to offer, but it is another strong piece of evidence to suggest that this kind of trade is entirely possible in this day and age.
I know! I’m just as surprised as you are. I came into this article fully expecting to rain on everyone’s parade, but it turns out the forecast is only partly cloudy.
Looking at those four examples, there appears to be on common thread: it is a contending team making a deal with a losing team, but one that is not in a total rebuild. The Red Sox, Rays and Jays were all teams that were struggling in that given year but very much had designs on being contenders the following season. These are the teams that don’t want long-term development players and the kind of teams that Angels should be targeting if, in fact, they actually want to make such a trade.
Those sort of situations aren’t all that common, but once again, the Angels look to be in luck this season. The White Sox, A’s and maybe teams like the Jays, Orioles, Padres and Indians could become that exact kind of trade partner if things continue to go south for those clubs. Now all the Angels need to do is make sure that their season doesn’t go south first so that there is actually still a reason to even consider these kinds of trades.
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