Today in Blue Jay history.
July 19, 2000, 25 years ago, the Blue Jays traded Michael Young (and Darwin Cubillan) to the Texas Rangers for Esteban Loaiza. It turned out to be one of the worst trades in team history.
On that day, the Jays sat tied for 2nd place in the AL East with the Boston Red Sox, just 1.5 games back from the division-leading New York Yankees. We had a pretty good offense, Shannon Stewart leading off, Carlos Delgado hitting clean-up, Tony Batista (who would hit 41 home runs that year) playing third base, Darren Fletcher, and Jose Cruz. Jr.
Our rotation needed help. Roy Halladay started the season in the number two spot behind David Wells in the rotation. He had 18 starts and 18 relief appearances the year before and had a 3.92 ERA in 149.1 innings. We thought he’d be a big part of the Jays’ rotation for 2000. At the time of the trade, Roy had a 10.90 ERA. It was amazing that they could stay in the race with him in the rotation.
Additionally, Chris Carpenter and Kelvim Escobar weren’t performing well. Escobar was sitting at 7-9 with a 4.90 ERA (he’d finish with a 5.35 ERA), and Carpenter was 7-9 with a 6.66 ERA. So we did need the pitching help.
Esteban Loaiza wasn’t a bad pitcher. He was just 28, but wasn’t doing great with the Rangers, with a 5-6 record and a 5.37 ERA in 17 starts at the time. He pitched well for the Jays in the second half of 2000, going 5-7 with a 3.62 ERA in 14 starts. Unfortunately, we didn’t score much for him.
The team went from 51-45 on the day of the trade to finish at 83-79, not a bad result, but we didn’t make the playoffs, finishing 3rd, 4.5 games back.
Loaiza played for the Jays for the next two seasons. In his 2.5 years as a Jay, he went 25- 28 with a 4.96 ERA in 69 starts as a Blue Jay. Not bad, not superb. The Jays didn’t perform well, finishing third in 2001 with a record of 80-82 and third again in 2002 with a record of 78-84. After the 2002 season, Esteban signed with the White Sox as a free agent. The Jays got no compensation.
Young turned out to be pretty good. 7 All-Star appearances. A .302/.348/.446 slash line over 13 seasons. He won a (laughable) Gold Glove. And he was voted, by his peers, as baseball’s most underrated player (also a pretty funny idea). But he was an excellent player.
It was a bad trade. However, in fairness to Gord Ash, as much as I’m sure he doesn’t feature this trade on his resume, it was defensible at the time. We had Alex Gonzalez (the first) at short. He was good and only 27 at the time. Homer Bush was playing second, also 27, and Tony Batista was pounding out the home runs at third base. There was no apparent need for Young at the time. Young was a good prospect, but no one would have guessed he’d become the player that he has.
Gord made several bad trades. I’m not sure if this is the worst, but it must be in the top five. Or the bottom five. However, we then needed a starter, and no one could have predicted that Young would become the player he did.