13 Years Ago Today
The Blue Jays and the Astros made a ten-player trade.
We got J.A. Happ, Brandon Lyon, and David Carpenter.
The Astros got Francisco Cordero, Ben Francisco, Joe Musgrove, Carlos Perez, David Rollins, Asher Wojciechowski and Kevin Comer.
Happ played for us for 2.5 seasons. He was hurt a fair bit of that time (one of the injuries was when he was hit in the head with a line drive and, surprisingly, ended up on the DL with a leg injury). In the 2.5 seasons, he had a 19-20 record and 4.35
ERA in 58 games, 50 starts. We traded him to the Mariners for Michael Saunders. J.A. wasn’t good for Seattle, and they traded him to the Pirates, where he became an excellent pitcher. He went 7-2 with a 1.85 ERA in 21 games. After the season, we signed him as a free agent, and he was great for 2.5 seasons before being traded to the Yankees. He won 20 games in 2016. As a Yankee, he was 21-10, with a 4.13 ERA in 51 games. In 2021, he split time between the Twins and the Cardinals, and that was the end of his career. In total, he was 133-100 (59 of those wins with the Jays) with a 4.13 ERA in 354 games, 328 starts.
Lyon finished 2012 with the Jays and had a 2.88 ERA in 30 relief appearances. He signed with the Mets after the season. 2013 was his last season in the majors. We took him predominantly to even out the money a bit.
Carpenter threw 2.2 innings for the Jays. Then he had a couple of good seasons with the Braves. After that, he threw a handful of innings for the Yankees, Nationals, and Rangers (in 2019, after three seasons out of the MLB). He pitched in 222 games with a 3.69 ERA over 6 seasons.
On the other side:
Cordero was a 37-year-old reliever at the time of the trade. He wasn’t good for us that season and much worse for the Astros in 6 games. So that was the end for him.
Francisco played 27 games for us, hitting .240/.296/.380 in 54 P.A. He hit about the same for the Astros after the trade. Then he had a few at-bats with the Rays and Yankees for the next two seasons.
Musgrove pitched two seasons with the Astros, in 2016 and 2017, and was 11-12 with a 4.52 ERA in 49 games, including 25 starts. Then he was part of the trade that brought Gerrit Cole to Houston. He had three seasons with the Pirates. For the last three years, he’s been a Padre. Career, he is 59-56 with a 3.74 ERA in 185 games, 159 starts. Musgrove is having a good 2025 season.
Carlos Perez never played with the Astros. He was traded to the Angels for Hank Conger after the 2014 season. He’s since played for the Braves, Rangers and A’s (hitting .232/.393/.384 for them this year).
The Mariners took David Rollins in the Rule 5 draft before the 2015 season. He pitched in 2015 and 2016 with a 7.60 ERA in 34.1 innings.
Wojciechowski pitched 16 innings for the Astros in 2015 and 62 innings for the Reds in 2017, 119.1 innings for the Orioles over the next two seasons and 4 for the Yankees in 2021.
If you consider that Happ likely wouldn’t have signed with the Blue Jays before the 2016 season if he hadn’t been with the Jays before, we can call the trade a win.
Beyond that, we could have utilized the pitchers we traded away as depth when we experienced injury problems over those years, but we acquired the best player in the trade (though Musgrove would be nice to have now).
I remember not being thrilled with getting Happ, Alex Anthopoulos liked him, and he was right in the long run. It took a while, but he became an excellent starter. Alex saw something in him.
It is also Anthony Alford’s 31st birthday. Alford was a third-round pick in the 2012 draft. He became the Jays’ top prospect and reached as high as #25 on Baseball America’s top 100 prospects list.
He appeared in a handful of games from 2017 to 2020 with the Jays, but never received an extended trial. It’s tough to make it in the MLB if you get in a game here and then another in a week or two. I would have liked them to give him a spot in the lineup every day for a month and see what he could have become.
Over those four seasons, he got into 46 games with the Jays, hitting .155/.200/.254.
The Pirates took him from us off waivers in August 2020. There, he played in 56 games across three seasons. He hit better, with a .209/.275/.368 line.
Benji Molina turns 51 today. Benji had a 13-year MLB career, one of which, 2006, was with the Jays. He hit .284/.319/.467 in 117 games, with 19 home runs. Career, he played in 1362 games, hitting .274/
.307/.411 with 144 home runs.
Gary Woods would have turned 72 today. He died in 2015 at 61, far too young, of a heart attack.
Woods was an original Blue Jay, having been selected in the expansion draft before our first season. He played center field in our first game, going 1 for 5 with a stolen base. He played 60 games, hitting .216/.246/264 with 0 home runs and 5 steals.
He played 8 games in 1978 and was traded to the Astros after the season. Woods played two seasons there and then four with the Cubs. In all, he played in 525 games, with a .243/.302/.337 with 13 home runs.
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