Was the Tyler Mahle Trade the Worst Trade In Twins History?

[LewFordLives]

4 hours ago, Chachi said:

Giving partial credit to whatever we gave up to get Ron Davis.

I've come to peace with R.D. I think the guy was just flat out over used.  There were a couple years where he pitched over 100 innings as a reliever. You would never see that today.  He was a slightly better than average reliever being forced into high leverage situations because the Twins had no one else.

[pierre75275]

Bruno for Herr

Delmon Young trade

JJ hardy for Jim hoey 

[Rod Carews Birthday]

Evaluating a trade after the fact is something that needs to be done, but it always lacks the perspective of what was going on at the time of the trade.  Take the Delmon Young trade — obviously a loss, but at the time we really needed the guy he was projected to become and we had three young starters.  We chose to part with Garza over Baker and Slowey.  We also decided to trade Jason Bartlett in the hopes that somebody like Alexi Casilla might take over the middle infield.  We really wanted Young, the hitter, who never really developed and remained Young, the troubled soul.  In retrospect it was a bad trade, but it wasn’t so illogical or crazy at the time. 

In retrospect, the Mahle trade looks that way as well.  However, it basically came down to whether you wanted to trade Julien and Wallner or trade CES and Steer.  They weren’t likely to all play on the same major league team in the future and the front office liked the odds of Julien and Wallner being successful long-term more than CES and Steer.  I happen to agree with that as I think CES and Steer will only be successful in the short term.  It was a swing for the fence move and one I would be happy to have them make again.  Next time, I hope they don’t trade for a guy who winds up getting injured, but that’s pretty uncontrollable.  

[Richie the Rally Goat]

2 hours ago, Brandon said:

The all time worst move is still giving up David Ortiz for nothing.  

The Twins traded Dave Hollins to the Mariners in exchange for Big Papi. That worked out pretty well!

[lecroy24fan]

Sam Dyson somehow made it this far without being mentioned.....

[Irishman]

Most Trades by Twins seemed to be horrible.   Gotta stop making bad trades!!!!

[Irishman]

22 minutes ago, Richie the Rally Goat said:

The Twins traded Dave Hollins to the Mariners in exchange for Big Papi. That worked out pretty well!

Letting Big Papi go was most baddest and horrible decision Twins ever made!  

[Fatbat]

3 hours ago, nicksaviking said:

My dad didn't even know how to tell me this one happened. My cousin broke the news to me instead and I was crushed and sobbed uncontrollably.

Worst 30th birthday ever.

 

I was 19 and I am still bitter about it. 

[Jocko87]

5 hours ago, ashbury said:

I'm unwilling to rank trades.  Remember the quote from Tolstoy's lesser known sequel, Anna Karenina: The Baseball Chronicles:

All happy trades are alike; each unhappy trade is unhappy in its own way.

How to compare Tommy Herr, John Ryan Murphy, Paul Harzell, Carlos Gomez, Scott Klingenbeck, Jim Hoey, Matt Capps, Delmon Young, Jorge Lopez, and Tyler Mahle?  Don't.

But it's the offseason! And it's quiet out.

3 hours ago, Nine of twelve said:

There are two ways to evaluate trades.

One, judge the trade based on available knowledge at the time of the trade.

Two, judge the trade based on the entire trade tree. Judge the performance of all involved players for all teams. Include all players involved in all subsequent trades. To be complete, include the performance of players who continued their careers elsewhere after they were released, DFA'd, or non-tendered, and the performance of players they were traded with and for. Trade trees can continue for decades, and it's far too soon to attempt to evaluate the Mahle trade at this point.

 

 

Only item one is a valid metric. Everything in item two is fodder for clicks.

In this case, at the time of the deal, it was a good trade. It did not work out. A couple AAAA hitters that can't catch and a prospect for two years of an actual frontline pitcher is a good trade. Once that pitcher gets hurt, all other evaluations are invalid.

Had he not been hurt, would we have this article with the complete opposite viewpoint? Maybe. Highly possible he starts game 3 in the Astros series. Had he payed and still sucked, well, we might still be having this conversation.

In fact, had he been healthy we would have a bunch of chatter about how the cheap Twins never sign pitching and let him get away.

The article I want to read is about what lead to them trading for multiple pitchers with arm problems and what they did to fix it. Was the head trainer change part of that? Are we going to have that issue again this year? It really makes a trade look bad.

This is nowhere close to the worst trade in Twins history and no amount of All-Star games for CES will change that. (I'm betting the under on zero)

[RonCoomersOPS]

6 hours ago, DJL44 said:

Brunanksy for Herr 

Lawton for Reed

Hicks for Murphy

Carew for Engle

 

This. I'm not even sure the Mahle deal cracks the top 10 worst Twins trades ever. And even if it was the actual worst one ever, I still make it because the intent behind it was to address an area of need for a playoff run.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

1 hour ago, Irishman said:

Letting Big Papi go was most baddest and horrible decision Twins ever made!  

I agree, but this discussion is grading trades. Ortiz was released by the Twins.

[Richmond Dude]

No way the Carew trade belongs on this list.  It wasn't a good trade in terms of outcome, of course.  But it ignores the fact that Carew had been very open that he wouldn't play another inning for Calvin Griffith and the trade was made from that position of weakness.  They got two starting position players in exchange, it was fortunate that they got even that.

[Greglw3]

The Mahle trade was one of the worst, but in my mind, having already been a Twins fan for 13 years, by far the worst trade in Twins history was the trade that sent Rod Carew for a bunch of mediocre to poor players from California and Ken Landreaux who didn’t work out. 

The point is, who in their right mind would trade one of the greatest hitters of all time with 7 batting titles by 32, .350, .359, .364 and .388 batting averages in the 70s?

Calvin Griffith’s biggest mistake.

[Greglw3]

1 hour ago, Richie the Rally Goat said:

I agree, but this discussion is grading trades. Ortiz was released by the Twins.

See my post below but I would contend that the Big Papi snafu was inexcusable and a colossal mistake but even worse was trading Rod Carew, one of the greatest hitters of all time, to the Angels for ultimately nothing, though 1 of the 5 plays, Landreaux had one good year but not close to an average Carew year in the nineteen seventies.

[strumdatjag]

Tommy Herr was a bad addition, not only because of his poor playing but also he was a preachy pain in the uh uh uh neck in the clubhouse.   Bruno went to have a few average to above average seasons.   This was a bad trade more for the poor addition of Herr 

[old nurse]

7 hours ago, Craig Arko said:

I don’t know. Does it matter?

they gotta crank out something They didn’t try bad poetry like

twas the week before Christmas 

Twins’ news was a dud

didn’t know what to do

So lets slop some mud

 

[Richie the Rally Goat]

3 hours ago, Jocko87 said:

But it's the offseason! And it's quiet out.

Only item one is a valid metric. Everything in item two is fodder for clicks.

In this case, at the time of the deal, it was a good trade. It did not work out. A couple AAAA hitters that can't catch and a prospect for two years of an actual frontline pitcher is a good trade. Once that pitcher gets hurt, all other evaluations are invalid.

Had he not been hurt, would we have this article with the complete opposite viewpoint? Maybe. Highly possible he starts game 3 in the Astros series. Had he payed and still sucked, well, we might still be having this conversation.

In fact, had he been healthy we would have a bunch of chatter about how the cheap Twins never sign pitching and let him get away.

The article I want to read is about what lead to them trading for multiple pitchers with arm problems and what they did to fix it. Was the head trainer change part of that? Are we going to have that issue again this year? It really makes a trade look bad.

This is nowhere close to the worst trade in Twins history and no amount of All-Star games for CES will change that. (I'm betting the under on zero)

I agree with this, and wonder if his potential to already be injured at the time of the trade, was the reason why he was so cheap?

did the Twins see something in Mahle’s medicals to reduce the trade cost?

[stringer bell]

1 hour ago, Greglw3 said:

See my post below but I would contend that the Big Papi snafu was inexcusable and a colossal mistake but even worse was trading Rod Carew, one of the greatest hitters of all time, to the Angels for ultimately nothing, though 1 of the 5 plays, Landreaux had one good year but not close to an average Carew year in the nineteen seventies.

Carew compiled 17.4 WAR (BBRef) in his seven years with the Angels. While the Twins didn't get any stars from California, I don't think this qualifies as a disaster. 

[PuckettProtector]

It was a decent trade, it just didn't work out.  Don't know if that is on our medical staff or just pure bad luck. But imagine him when he is pitching well as our #3 with Maeda and Ryan in the BP in the playoffs. I honestly thought he'd sign with us for cheap out of guilt. Oh well. 

 

Could have made state. 

[rwilfong86]

Easily in the top 3 I would say. 

[LewFordLives]

14 hours ago, lecroy24fan said:

Sam Dyson somehow made it this far without being mentioned.....

He literally pitched only 11 innings for the Twins, yet after the allegations came out, all the news articles showed pictures of him in a TWINS UNIFORM.  Lovely.

[nicksaviking]

14 hours ago, Fatbat said:

I was 19 and I am still bitter about it. 

Ha, well if I confess that I was actually nine, the joke doesn't land.

[DJL44]

19 hours ago, Brandon said:

Lawton for Reed wasn’t a bad trade.

On paper, no. But from what I remember Lawton was well liked and nobody liked Rick Reed.

[DJL44]

13 hours ago, Richmond Dude said:

No way the Carew trade belongs on this list.  It wasn't a good trade in terms of outcome, of course.  But it ignores the fact that Carew had been very open that he wouldn't play another inning for Calvin Griffith and the trade was made from that position of weakness.  They got two starting position players in exchange, it was fortunate that they got even that.

I'm all for blaming Calvin Griffith for ruining the relationship with the best player to ever wear a Twins uniform, then being forced to trade him for not much. I don't think that's something to ignore.

[lake_guy]

15 hours ago, Jocko87 said:

 

The article I want to read is about what lead to them trading for multiple pitchers with arm problems and what they did to fix it. Was the head trainer change part of that? Are we going to have that issue again this year? It really makes a trade look bad.

 

Exactly this.  It's the process that got them to the point of pulling the trigger on injured pitchers that bothers me, and they've done it three times now.   Dyson, Paddock and Mahle.  It looks like the Paddock trade may work out, we'll see.

[Fatbat]

58 minutes ago, lake_guy said:

Exactly this.  It's the process that got them to the point of pulling the trigger on injured pitchers that bothers me, and they've done it three times now.   Dyson, Paddock and Mahle.  It looks like the Paddock trade may work out, we'll see.

It's as bad as trading for a player that you know has zero interest in playing in MN. 

[High heat]

No, at the time you  traded extra pieces on the depth chart for a very solid starting pitchers.  

At the time Twins had Steers behind Miranda, Martin and CES without a position and was seeing Kiriloff taking off at 1B. 
 

I also think the Twins have no confidence or ability in developing LHP. 

[nicksaviking]

1 hour ago, DJL44 said:

I'm all for blaming Calvin Griffith for ruining the relationship with the best player to ever wear a Twins uniform, then being forced to trade him for not much. I don't think that's something to ignore.

Yeah, not dissimilar to the Johan Santana trade. Unlike the Carew situation I don't think there was any animosity with Santana, but like Carew, it was about fair compensation. Santana made it clear he wanted out because Terry Ryan was too wishy-washy to extend the star players long term.

[Brandon]

1 hour ago, DJL44 said:

On paper, no. But from what I remember Lawton was well liked and nobody liked Rick Reed.

from what I remember the Twins had 3 or 4 good starters and Reed completed the rotation while Lawton was one of their best hitters that year and the Twins sorely needed offense.  and trading Lawton killed the offense.  but Reed was ok the rest of that year and good the next and terrible after that.

I think Reed wasn't liked because he did what was in his best interest and crossed the picket line during the strike in 1995 and was a replacement player.

[Five minute major]

For me it is because I immediately recognized how horrendous this trade was.   I just didn't and don't understand wtf the FO was thinking on this one.  I will never claim to be guru like some of the other guys here but my goodness, it was so obvious to me.    I personally think the HIcks for Murphy trade was brutal as well but at the time of the trade I understood the reason,

This trade is going to haunt us for years and IMO should have led to some changes in the FO.