The Anaheim Angels of Anaheim pulled the trigger on a huge trade back at the 2008 MLB Trade Deadline. On July 29, they sent Casey Kotchman to the Braves in exchange for rental 1st Baseman extraordinaire Mark Teixeira. It ended up being the most important trade in team history but not for the reason anyone would ever think.
Friday, August 28 at 9:38p – Andrew Painter v Reid Detmers (L)
Angel Stadium – Anaheim, CA
Saturday, August 29 at 10:07p – Cristopher Sanchez v Ryan Johnson (R)
Sunday, August 30 at 4:07p – Zack Wheeler v Yusei Kikuchi (L)
To address your first thought, yes, Rod Carew was the probably the best trade acquisition the team ever made. Losing Nolan Ryan to the Mets was probably the worst. Neither were as important as the Teixeira trade and here’s why.
The 2008 Angels were 66-40 when they made the trade, good for the best record in baseball at the time. Teixiera was having a good year for Atlanta at the time of the trade with a .902 OPS, but he went nuclear after the trade hitting .358 with 3.7 WAR in just 54 games. That’s nuts. The team wasn’t quite as good from the time of the trade, but still finished with the best record in baseball with 100 wins. They were the team to beat.
…until they weren’t. The Angels lost their first-round series the Boston Red Sox. Teixeira hit .467 in the 4-game series, but his blistering second half would mean nothing other than his free agent price tag was set to skyrocket. He and fellow 2008 trade deadline dynamo CC Sabathia were set to be the two biggest free agents on the market.
The Angels had money to spend and planned to spend a lot of it on keeping their new first baseman. They offered him an 8/$160m deal. Considering the Yankees came to early deals with Sabathia at 7/$161m and A.J. Burnett at 5/$82.5m, the Angels probably felt pretty good about their chances. There’s no way the Yankees would sign everybody, right? Unfortunately, yes. Yes, they would. In January, Teixeira signed with New York for 8/$180m. With ace closer Francisco Rodriguez also leaving to sign with the Mets, the offseason was a disaster.
Ok, wait, why was the trade so important then? Well, it wasn’t for Casey Kotchman!1 Because Teixeira was bound to get a huge contract, the Angels gave him a qualifying offer which he declined. This meant that Anaheim was in line to get an extra first round pick from whatever team signed him. Because it was the Yankees, they were set to pick #25.
The 2009 MLB Draft was a good one. Steven Stradburg went #1 to the Nationals, Zack Wheeler went #6 to the Giants, and LSU outfielder Jared Mitchell went #23 to the White Sox. Wait, who? Mitchell never made it to the big leagues. He was however the last player to be picked before the Angels picked that year. They also had the #24 pick as a comp from the Mets in losing K-Rod. They selected Randal Grichuk. Grichuk has been a competent major leaguer, but nothing to write a story about. That takes us to #25.
Because the Angels traded Kotchman to the Braves for Teixeira, because the Angels wouldn’t pay him $180m, and because 24 picks went without anyone knowing anything, the Angels were able to select Mike Trout with their Yankees comp pick at #25. Granted, the Yankees won the World Series that year, but things worked out pretty well for the Angels with this one. By 2012, Trout was the best player in baseball and on his way to winning 3 MVPs and a ticket to Cooperstown on the first ballot. I think they would take him over Teixeira any day.
The big losers of the move end up being the Braves and Brewers. Had Teixeira stayed with the Braves, Trout theoretically could have been drafted by Atlanta. Of course, had the Angels re-signed him then the Brewers would have been in line to get the Yankees first round comp pick that year. Because Teixeria signed the bigger contract, the Angels got the pick instead and the Angels had to settle for #73. Crazy.
- No offense, but he has nothing to do with any of this other than being very little to give up for a great half season of Teix. ↩︎
Photo: Eric Kilby on Flickr (Original version), CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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