MLB Metrics 101: The Most Brutal Blockbuster Trade Deadline Fails Since 2000

The Major League Baseball trade deadline can make both dreams and nightmares come true, and there have been plenty of both in the new millennium.

For anyone curious about the worst nightmares, Bleacher Report's MLB Metrics 101 is on the case.

Hello and welcome back. This week's installment covers the worst trade deadline fails of the 2000s. Here are the ground rules:

• Trades must have been made in July.
• Only noteworthy trades make the cut for analysis.
• Only the controllability being exchanged at the time counts.

Read on for more on how this is going to work.

Here's the idea: round up big trades, see how much value was gained for the seller and for the buyer and calculate the difference. The biggest differences, and thus the most lopsided trades, win.

As per usual, "value" means wins above replacement. Baseball Reference WAR—which weighs offense, defense and baserunning for position players and innings pitched and runs allowed for pitchers—is the standard go-to.

The first caveat, however, has to do with the sample size.

Add up all the July trades made since 2000, and you get hundreds of deals involving hundreds of players. The vast majority of them are either uninteresting (e.g., Alex Cora for Ramon Vazquez) or nothing to write home about for either side (i.e. Carlos Beltran for Zack Wheeler).

Instead, a fair compromise is cherry-picked trades that look big and/or lopsided in retrospect. The final count includes 71 trades, which can be found here.

Another caveat has to do with context. When teams make trades, they're weighing both talent and controllability. Here, the focus is on how much controllability teams were securing at the time. Additional control gained through extensions or re-signings is another matter.

Tenure interruptions are another no-no. For example, the Toronto Blue Jays got Edwin Encarnacion in a July trade in 2009 but momentarily lost him on waivers in 2010. That's a wrench in that particular set of gears.

Otherwise, the only thing to know is that this list consists exclusively of sellers who turned short-term assets into long-term boons. But to give credit where it's due, let's begin with honorable mentions for buyers who scored big.

Curt Schilling to the Arizona Diamondbacks, 2000

When the Arizona Diamondbacks traded for Curt Schilling on July 26, 2000, they were getting a co-ace to partner with Randy Johnson. Thanks to a preexisting contract, Schilling also would be around through 2001.

A year later, Johnson and Schilling finished first and second in the National League Cy Young voting and were co-MVPs of the World Series. Whatever the opposite of "misfire" is, that's it.

In return, the Philadelphia Phillies got Omar Daal, Nelson Figueroa, Travis Lee and Vicente Padilla. Not a terrible return, in retrospect, but none of the four turned into a star.

Aramis Ramirez to the Chicago Cubs, 2003

Kenny Lofton was a mere rental, so it made sense that the Pittsburgh Pirates were comfortable trading him to the Chicago Cubs on July 23, 2003. But why they were comfortable including Aramis Ramirez is still baffling 14 years later.

Ramirez was only 25 and had looked like a rising superstar as recently as 2001. He was also under club control through 2005. Sure enough, he went on to reemerge as a star.

The Pirates got Matt Bruback, Bobby Hill and Jose Hernandez back in the deal. There are good reasons why you don't remember them.

Carlos Lee and Nelson Cruz to the Texas Rangers, 2006

Carlos Lee was the main draw in the trade the Texas Rangers made with the Milwaukee Brewers on July 28, 2006. But he was a mere rental. Also coming along was Nelson Cruz, who later developed into one of baseball's top sluggers.

The Brewers got back four players, including Francisco Cordero, Kevin Mench and Laynce Nix. Cordero did some fine relief work for them, but only for a season-and-a-half.

With plenty of pitching but not quite enough offense, the Oakland A's were understandably thrilled when they acquired Jose Guillen from the Cincinnati Reds on Deadline Day Eve in 2003.

"We're very excited," said Billy Beane, then Oakland's general manager, per Jack Curry of the New York Times. "We were looking for a big, right-handed-hitting outfielder and that's what we were able to acquire."

Guillen did have a 1.013 OPS and 23 home runs at the time, so, yeah. Absolutely.

But then he slumped in Oakland, putting up a .770 OPS and hitting eight homers. The A's then failed to advance in the playoffs, and Guillen left as a free agent.

Going back to Cincinnati, meanwhile, was a three-player package headlined by 25-year-old righty Aaron Harang. He went on to lead the NL in strikeouts in 2006, finish fourth in Cy Young voting in 2007 and be a generally dependable starter year in and year out.

As the A's were desperate for hitting in summer 2003, the Boston Red Sox were desperate for pitching. Thus, they acquired Jeff Suppan in a five-player deal with the Pirates.

Suppan had a 3.57 ERA through 141 innings at the time, so he did look like the cure for what ailed the Red Sox. But he fell flat in Boston. He managed just a 5.57 ERA in 11 regular-season appearances and was kept on the sidelines during the club's ill-fated postseason run.

Going the other way to Pittsburgh was second base prospect Freddy Sanchez and minor league lefty Mike Gonzalez. Both would make the Red Sox rue the day they thought Suppan would fix everything.

Gonzalez turned into one of the sport's best lefty relievers, posting a 2.37 ERA in four years with the Pirates.

Sanchez won the National League batting crown in 2006 and was an All-Star in '06, '07 and '09. He left Pittsburgh in a July 2009 trade, but not before he'd accumulated a .301 average in a Pirates uniform.

The Los Angeles Dodgers spent the first half of 2008 without a solid solution at third base. So, GM Ned Colletti got on the phone and squeezed Casey Blake out of the Cleveland Indians.

"Casey Blake is a gamer," Colletti said, according to ESPN's Jayson Stark. "His experience and character will be a plus as we head down the stretch in the final two months of the regular season."

Gamer or not, Blake hit a wall upon arriving in Los Angeles. His OPS fell from .830 to .773 down the stretch, and again to .700 in the postseason. He then became a free agent and cost $17.5 million to re-sign.

One player who went to Cleveland in the deal was right-hander Jon Meloan, who eventually faded away with only 13 major league appearances to his name.

The other, however, was Carlos Santana. He came up in 2010 and racked up an .809 OPS and 151 homers through 2016. And thanks to his 2012 extension, he's still producing now in what would have been his first free-agent season.

In the year 2017, the phrase "Jake Arrieta trade" is practically synonymous with "highway robbery."

It all started with a chance. The Chicago Cubs were only in the second year of their rebuild in 2013 and were looking for whatever upside they could get their hands on.

Thus, they rolled the dice on Arrieta, a former top prospect, and Pedro Strop, a struggling yet talented reliever, in an early July exchange with the Baltimore Orioles.

"We're very excited about the players we got in return," GM Jed Hoyer said, per ESPN.com. "Both guys have good arms."

All Arrieta's done since then is evolve into a Cy Young-winning ace with a 2.76 ERA in a Cubs uniform. For his part, Strop has been a strikeout machine with a 2.71 ERA as a Cub.

The Orioles got Scott Feldman and Steve Clevenger in the deal. They did OK. But that's pretty much all there is to say about Baltimore's end of the deal.

The New York Mets were good enough to reach the World Series in 2000. But midway through, they seemed badly in need of better defense at shortstop.

Cue ESPN's Tim Kurkjian summing up the late July deal they made with the Orioles:

...Mike Bordick is a quality defensive shortstop. And they got him without giving up a significant amount, so this is a great trade for the Mets. Melvin Mora is a valuable utility guy, but the Mets don't need a utility guy, they need an everyday shortstop.

The Bordick/Mora trade didn't derail the Mets. After all, they did win the National League pennant.

However, Mora became so much more than just a "utility guy." He emerged as a full-on star for the Orioles, accumulating 19.3 WAR between 2002 and 2005 alone. He was an All-Star in 2003 and 2005 and a Silver Slugger in 2004.

But hey, at least Mike Kinkade, Lesli Brea and Pat Gorman never amounted to much. For whatever that's worth.

Ben Broussard was a decent hitter for the Indians between 2002 and midway through 2006, compiling an .801 OPS through 524 games.

Desperate for offense at the time, the Seattle Mariners had to have him. So a trade was struck.

"[Broussard] is simply an upgrade to the left-handed side of the DH," then-Mariners GM Bill Bavasi said, according to Corey Brock of MLB.com. "We've been looking for a left-handed bat that can provide average and production, and Ben certainly has done that this season."

Instead, that turned out to be the beginning of the end for Broussard. He slumped to the finish line and ultimately played his last season in the majors in 2008.

The centerpiece of the deal for the Tribe was Shin-Soo Choo. He would emerge to average an .855 OPS and 16 homers and 16 stolen bases per season between 2008 and 2012, making him one of the AL's best players in that span.

Well before he became a free-agent bust for the Mariners, Chone Figgins was a trade steal for the Anaheim Angels.

The mid-July deal in 2001 through which the Angels acquired him hardly made a ripple on the national landscape. Figgins was an unknown prospect for the Colorado Rockies, and he was acquired for a middling outfielder named Kimera Bartee. The deal was a low-risk dice roll for both clubs.

The Angels scored. Figgins' speed helped them win the World Series in 2002, and he then developed into a quality regular in subsequent seasons. He averaged 3.5 WAR per season between 2004 and 2009, peaking at 7.7 WAR in '09.

Bartee played in just 12 games for the Rockies and then disappeared from the majors. Dan O'Dowd, the former Rockies GM who made the deal, has regrets.

"The lesson I learned in the Figgins trade is to know your players, more than what I had on paper," he told MLB.com's Thomas Harding in 2016.

Trades involving more than two teams aren't easy to judge in retrospect. But the one involving Corey Kluber on Deadline Day in 2010 stands out as one with a clear winner.

The contemporary headliners were veteran hurler Jake Westbrook, who went from Cleveland to the St. Louis Cardinals, and slugging outfielder Ryan Ludwick, who went from St. Louis to the San Diego Padres. The deal wasn't a major boon for either side, however.

Meanwhile, Kluber went from San Diego to Cleveland. He was a little-known prospect with seemingly zero upside. The book on him at Baseball America concluded he "could be a back-of-the-rotation starter."

So much for that. Kluber debuted in 2011, was an emerging star by 2013 and a Cy Young winner by 2014. He has a 3.28 ERA in seven seasons with Cleveland.

Kluber's 22.6 WAR isn't just 22.4 more WAR than either side got out of that 2010 trade. It's that much more than both sides got out of it.

Let's get one thing straight: Mark Teixeira was actually quite good for the Atlanta Braves.

He stayed in Atlanta for a year following a Deadline Day deal with the Rangers in 2007, and he put up a .943 OPS and hit 37 home runs. That's not nothing. Far from it.

The idea, however, was for Teixeira to bring the Braves more than just good production.

"We've got a World Series team," shortstop Edgar Renteria said after the 2007 deal was struck, per Charles Odum of the Associated Press. 

Alas, the Braves didn't even make the postseason in 2007. They then got worse in 2008, prompting a July trade that sent Teixeira to the Angels—which ended up netting them Mike Trout, but that's another story.

By contrast, the 2007 deal turned out just a wee bit better for the Rangers.

It returned a five-player package headlined by shortstop Elvis Andrus, right-hander Neftali Feliz, left-hander Matt Harrison and catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia. The latter was gone by 2010, but the other three helped boost the Rangers to back-to-back World Series appearances in 2010 and 2011.

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays parted with their golden boy when they traded Aubrey Huff to the Houston Astros in 2006.

Huff came to Tampa Bay via the draft in the franchise's first year of existence in 1998 and would eventually emerge as a homegrown star. By the time he was traded to Houston, he had an .819 career OPS and 128 homers.

"This will give us an offense boost which we sorely need," then-GM Tim Purpura said, according to the Associated Press.

Huff did hold up his end of the bargain with an .819 OPS and 13 homers in 68 games. But it was all for naught, as Houston missed the playoffs.

In return, Tampa Bay got Ben Zobrist.

He came up in 2006 and turned into an All-Star utility man and a poster boy for wins above replacement. He averaged 6.5 WAR per year between 2009 and 2013 and now ranks second behind only Evan Longoria on Tampa Bay's all-time WAR leaderboard. To boot, he helped the Rays make it to four postseasons.

Stats and trade records courtesy of Baseball Reference.