August 31, 2017 was a pretty crazy night. It was the waiver trade deadline for MLB, which meant it was every team’s last chance to work out a trade for a player and still have that player be eligible for the postseason. The craziness of that night is mostly owed to the Houston Astros, the Detroit Tigers, and starting pitcher Justin Verlander. The two teams worked out a trade that sent Verlander from the Tigers to the Astros, and it went right down to the wire of the 12 midnight EDT deadline. Jon Heyman already reported that the trade was done with just a minute to go,but apparently 60 seconds was an overestimation. The trade was verified with mere seconds left before the deadline. Ben Reiter of SI.com spoke to Tigers GM Al Avila and Astros GM Jeff Luhnow and got a timeline of the night the deal happened, right down to the final seconds. And while the end of the deal was crazy, Luhnow’s part of the story is pretty wild. He had planned to do his waiver trade deals from Houston, surrounded by his staff, but was with his in-laws in Los Angeles instead — Hurricane Harvey had closed the Houston airports. So according to Reiter, his trade deadline war room looked a little different than it had in the past. So, as his club flew to Tampa to play a relocated series against the Rangers, he stayed in L.A. to negotiate from one of the only spots in his in-laws’ house that receives strong cell service: the dining room table. Not ideal, but there are worse places to set up shop in a house than the dining room. It could have been the bathroom, which would have involved stories of Luhnow making this deal while sitting fully clothed on a toilet, using it like a chair. Actually, the bathroom did come into play. Luhnow was about to take a shower when his phone somehow found a signal and delivered a call from Avila a few minutes before 8 p.m. PDT, just over an hour before the deadline. The two GMs agreed on the deal, but it wasn’t done. Verlander had to weigh in and waive his no-trade clause if he agreed to it, and it wasn’t certain he would. Avila had sent people out to track down Verlander, so all Luhnow could do was go back to the dining room and wait. The dining room had its own problems, though. Luhnow’s in-laws were hosting a dinner party that night, which meant that his war room was now filled with food and plates and silverware and people. This moment was probably pretty awkward. The dinner guests were filling their plates with food from the kitchen buffet and settling in around Luhnow. “We’ve got four minutes left!” he shouted into his phone to his staff, drawing quizzical glances from the diners. “We’ve got to do this now!” Luhnow didn’t end up finding out if the deal was done until 15 minutes after the deadline had passed. This is what an MLB executive told him on the phone. “The deal’s been approved,” the executive said. “But, Jeff, don’t ever put me through that again. We received final verification from Verlander at 11:59 and 58 seconds.” Two seconds to spare! That has to be a record. At the very least it’s a great story. And if Verlander ends up helping the Astros in the postseason (or even to a World Series victory), it’s a story that will go down in both Astros and baseball lore, one that we’ll tell for years to come.
He’d told us he’d made some changes to his swing that offseason,” says Luhnow, sheepishly. “We didn’t give him enough at bats in spring training to show us. Literally four days after we released him, he’s playing on a back field in Kissimmee against the Astros’ Triple A team and he hits three home runs. It was like, What did we just do?” That is the past that hurts. We gave Wallace so many chances, but we couldn't bother to give JD even ST at bats. We weren't willing to have him occupy a spot in AAA.
I'm not sure that's fair. Both of them got about 1000 MLB at-bats and then were let go from the organization. In JD's case, he got worse in each of his 3 years - there wasn't really much reason to believe a turnaround was imminent. In the years they were released, Wallace (March 12) was ditched much earlier in spring training than JD (March 22). I don't know how many ABs he got that spring, but it seems like he was probably given some chances that spring.
I'm going to forgoe billy beanies analytics for once and just say it, Brett Wallaces ass was too fat for baseball success. He just didn't look the part. And his girlfriend was not hot enuff. Poor kid.
Wallace had multiple swing changes over the years. JD had the 1, and had just dominated in winter ball and then he basically don't appear in the spring. It didn't make sense, other than to do JD a favor so he could get a better chance.
After 3 years of declining stats, he went 3-18 with 7 strikeouts and a 0.470 OPS in the Spring with the Astros. I'm not sure what exactly they were supposed to do. He also cleared waivers - meaning not a single other team thought enough of whatever his changes / winterball results were to claim him.
Give him more Spring ABs, straight from Luhnow's mouth. We didn't really have much in the OF and he didn't occupy a 40-man spot.
That's where, unfortunately, pre-existing bias', recency bias', and first-impression bias' all carry weight in ultimately making a decision. Its highly plausible that he came into that spring training already likely to be marked for being cut... and the only thing that was going to save him was either tearing the cover off the ball from the get-go, or somebody else getting injured. All GM's miss on guys just like this... sometimes it leads to them changing, being more patient.... and sometimes its just the nature of this game. Its also slightly a stretch to think that JD was "fixed" the second he changed his swing in the off-season. Its often downplayed how much of an impact the other Detroit hitters may have had on his approach, work ethic, and success.
OK? So what? Why is this still a topic of conversation? I think they shouldn't have traded Kenny Lofton. Let's talk about that for a while.
Because it was in the article? We should not have traded Kenny Lofton. Should have also kept Ben Zobrist.
Er... we got Mike Hampton out of that... can't complain about "Denver schools are better" Hampton. Look at the 1991 Astros roster: https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/HOU/1991-roster.shtml 90+ losses but that's a team full of arguable all-time Astros... C Servais/Eusebio 1B Bagwell 2B Biggio 3B Caminiti SS Cedeno/Yelding LF Gonzales CF Finley RF Anthony UTIL Candaele SP Harnisch SP Portugal SP Scott SP Deshaies SP Kile RP Osuna RP Schilling RP X. Hernandez A few tidbits: 1992 draft included Jester, Kendall, Damon.. we picked Phil Nevin
