Trades can alter the direction of any team. They could bring a team it’s last piece to win a championship, or a key contributor to turn a team into a real contender, or a trade could signal the beginning of a rebuild. Every year at the end of July we all obsess over the latest trade gossip to see who’s going where and for how much.
But what about the trades that don’t happen? Yes, it may be a hackneyed phrase, but sometimes the best trade you can do is the one you don’t make. Sometimes it’s a blessing
in disguise that a proposed trade isn’t accepted.
For the Phillies, there’s at least one trade that never materialized that stands out. In 2004, Jim Thome was in the second year of his groundbreaking (literally and figuratively) six year, $85M free agent deal with the Phillies. Thome, a bona-fide star and future Hall of Famer, was brought to Philadelphia to usher in a new era of Phillies baseball as the team broke ground on their brand-new ballpark. Gone were the days of “small market” talk and perpetual cellar dwelling. The Phillies intended to get better, and Thome was to lead the charge.
But there was a situation brewing by late in the 2004 season. A young first base prospect named Ryan Howard was destroying pitching across the minor leagues, having advanced to Triple-A by the end of the season. It was becoming abundantly clear that Howard was ready for the Big Leagues and possibly had a bright future ahead of him, but there was nowhere on the Phillies for him to play. Both Howard and Thome were locked at first base and seeing that the DH was of course not yet in the National League, the Phillies had to choose between the two.
It appeared in the summer of 2004 they almost did, as Dejan Kovacevic of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette later reported in 2007. The Phillies had offered Howard in a trade to the Pirates in exchange for Kris Benson, a 29-year-old starting pitcher. Reportedly, the Pirates turned the trade down because they believed they already had a prospect of Howard’s caliber in Brad Eldred. Instead, the Pirates traded Benson to the Mets in exchange for two future Phillies in Ty Wigginton and Jose Bautista, while the Phillies eventually chose to keep Howard and send Thome to the White Sox before the 2005 season.
As is abundantly obvious by now, that non-trade worked out pretty well for the Phillies. Howard went on to win Rookie of the Year in 2005, MVP in 2006, and a World Series championship in 2008, cementing himself among the Phillies all-time greatest players. Benson meanwhile pitched for four more seasons after 2004, appearing in 69 games with a 4.73 ERA for the Mets, Orioles, Rangers, and Diamondbacks before retiring following the 2010 season. Brad Eldred, the player the Pirates believed was on the same caliber as Howard, meanwhile played 90 total career games in the Majors between 2005 and 2012 and was worth -1.3 WAR.
But this is just one example from Phillies lore of a trade that didn’t happen that turned out to be for the best. In your opinion, what’s the best trade the Phillies never made?
