The Good Phight’s Decade in Review: Trades

Everyone loves a good trade. It keeps the rumor mill going, it keeps people talking and it always makes for awesome instant analysis! However, most trades, as we know, take a long time to determine a “winner” and a “loser”, and even then we aren’t sure we are making the correct call. Luckily for us, we now have a decade’s worth of deals from which we can anoint a king and a pauper when looking at the ransom. So, without further ado, here is how The Good Phight voted.

Best trade of the decade

J.T. Realmuto for Jorge Alfaro, Sixto Sanchez, Will Stewart and international money (4 votes); Roy Halladay for Kyle Drabek, Michael Taylor and Travis D’Arnaud (2 votes); Jimmy Rollins for Tom Wendle (1 vote); Roy Oswalt for J.A. Happy, Anthony Gose, and Jonathan Villar (1 vote); Nick Pivetta for Jonathan Papelbon (1 vote)

Now, let’s get the obvious out of the way. Yes, the Halladay trade counts because it affects the 2010 season. It was during the 2009-10 offseason, so we’re counting it. Our article, our rules.

Even with that caveat, the newest major trade for the franchise is the one that rules the day. The J.T. Realmuto trade, how we’ll refer to it when speaking of it to our grandchildren many years from now, takes the prize here as what we think is the best trade of the decade. It’s the one that looks poised to set the team up for a playoff run in the next few years since it has locked down the catching position with an elite talent that will not only affect the offense, but the pitching and defense as well. Call it recency bias if you want, but there isn’t any other trade that really can beat it.

Shout out to whoever voted for Nick Pivetta though.

Worst trade of the decade

Jarred Cosart, Jon Singleton, Josh Zeid and Domingo Santana for Hunter Pence (3 votes); Hunter Pence for Tommy Joseph, Seth Rosin and Nate Schierholtz (2 votes); Cliff Lee for Tyson Gillies, Philippe Aumont and JC Ramirez (2 votes); Shane Victorino for Ethan Martin, Josh Lindblom and PTBNL (1 vote); Ken Giles and Jonathan Arauz for Mark Appel, Harold Arauz, Tom Eshelman, Brett Oberholtzer and Vince Velasquez (1 vote)

Hunter Pence shows up a lot here and none of it good. For the most part, we either agree that the first trade to get Pence wasn’t that good because Pence was more or less “meh”, or that when he was traded away, the team didn’t get enough in return.

Since we are allowing trades that affected the 2010 season prior to its beginning, you see the Cliff Lee outgoing trade with some votes. To me, this is the one that smacks of missed opportunity. It’s the seeds of not wanting to spend while the chance to make the playoffs sits right there being planted by ownership. They didn’t want to pay both Lee and Roy Halladay, so Ruben Amaro was given the mandate that if he wanted to acquire Halladay, he had to move Lee and his salary. Oh, what could have been in 2010.

Most of the other trades you see here are simple to understand. The team didn’t get that much for what they were sending. Giles was a highly rated closer that had years of control left, yet the team got a broken former #1 pick and Velasquez. When Victorino was traded, there was hardly anything coming back. It seems the ability to assess talent coming back in trades has been passed on from Amaro to Matt Klentak. Yay.

That’s what we thought of the trades. Give us what you think in the comments below.