Twenty-four years ago today, the Blue Jays traded Raul Mondesi, along with cash, to the Yankees for Scott Wiggins. The return wasn’t significant—Wiggins only pitched three games for Toronto—but the true benefit was shedding Mondesi’s salary and removing an unhappy presence from the clubhouse.
Toronto had acquired Mondesi from the Dodgers in November 1999 by trading away Shawn Green. The Jays hadn’t wanted to part with Green, but he demanded a trade after the team hired Cito Gaston as hitting coach.
Green and Gaston had a rocky relationship dating back to Green’s early days with the team, when Gaston was manager. Gaston encouraged hitters to pull the ball, while Green favored hitting to all fields—leading to some disagreements, as detailed in Green’s autobiography.
The Jays hoped Mondesi’s statistics would improve with a move from the spacious Dodger Stadium to the more hitter-friendly SkyDome. That improvement never materialized, and Mondesi was openly unhappy in Toronto. Complicating matters, he had a hefty contract and Toronto boasted three superior outfielders in Shannon Stewart, Vernon Wells, and Jose Cruz.
Why did the Yankees want him?
It wasn’t the Yankees’ front office that wanted Mondesi, but team owner George Steinbrenner. He instructed team president Randy Levine to call Jays president Paul Godfrey to get the deal done, as reported by the Guelph Mercury Tribune:
As Godfrey tells it, the Yankees were struggling with injuries to their outfield at the time, and a play one day led a TV announcer to wonder why Steinbrenner was doing nothing with Mondesi on the market.
“Within minutes, Yankees president Randy Levine called me and said he wanted to make a deal for an outfielder,” Godfrey recalled. “I didn’t think he meant Mondesi, since we’d already tried shopping him around. So I asked, ‘Why isn’t GM Brian Cashman dealing with our GM, J.P. Ricciardi?’”
”And Randy yells, ‘George doesn’t want those two guys involved, they’ll never get a God damn deal done, I’m on instructions from George to get this God damn deal done now.’”
So Godfrey asked for five minutes, called Ricciardi and explained that he had to do the deal with Levine (to which Ricciardi replied, “I don’t care, get rid of Mondesi immediately”), got a list of prospects to ask for, and eventually settled with Levine on pitcher Scott Wiggins in return.
Toronto included $6 million with Mondesi in the trade. They’d been trying to move him for some time, but found no takers. Fortunately for the Jays, Steinbrenner was undeterred by his own front office’s reluctance. With Paul O’Neill retiring after the 2001 season, the Yankees were searching for a big bat in the lineup.
Mondesi played a season and a half for the Yankees, hitting .250/.323/.453 with 27 home runs over 169 games. At the 2004 trade deadline, he was sent to the Diamondbacks. Mondesi played for three more teams before retiring from baseball after the 2005 season.
While it might be considered one of J.P. Ricciardi’s better trades, he actually played a minimal role in making it happen.
After his baseball career, Mondesi became mayor of San Cristóbal, but was later sentenced to 8 years in prison for corruption and mismanagement of public funds during his term in office. That term ‘mismanagement is wrong. Embezzlement would be a better word.
