A's and Blue Jays Have a Frequent Trading Partnership That's Unrivaled
When the A’s picked up pitcher Burch Smith in a Feb. 15 trade, it was a big deal.
Why was it a big deal? Smith pitched for three teams last year and before than hadn’t pitched in the big leagues since 2013 while fighting a series of injuries. And the deal was for cash, not for another player.
It was a big deal because the team on the other side of the trade was the San Francisco Giants. The A’s and the Giants play only about eight miles from each other, but they are in different time zones when it comes to trades.
The two sides had gone 16 seasons without a trade, and even then, the deal wasn’t an eyebrow-raiser – just another cash deal with pitcher Adam Pettyjohn going from the Giants to the A’s in 2004.
Before that, you have to go back to late 1990 when the A’s traded outfielder Darren Lewis to the Giants in exchanged for infielder Ernest Riles.
But what about the other side of the equation? What about teams that trade all the time? MLB.com’s Andrew Simon apparently had some time on his hands, and using baseball-reference.com, perhaps the greatest website in existence, who tried to figure out the partners who paired up the most since MLB moved to 30 franchises in 1998.
The winners? The Oakland A’s and the Toronto Blue Jays. The A’s and Jays have paired up on deals 27 times, six more times than the second-place combination of the Reds and Padres.
The impact of some of those A’s-Jays deals is still being felt. Liam Hendriks, the A’s All-Star closer, was pitching in middle relief for Toronto, which needed a starter. So, the A’s got Hendriks by sending Jesse Chavez to the Jays. Chavez, somewhat surprisingly, was turned into a reliever.
Of course, the Jays knew what they were getting, since they’d traded Chavez to the A’s back in 2012.
Speaking of knowing what they were getting, that works both ways. Fully a dozen of the 27 trades between Oakland and Toronto took place between 2002-09. Billy Beane was the A’s GM at that point, and J.P. Riccardi.
Beane and Riccardi had been teammates with the Little Falls Mets in the early 1980s and after Riccardi had been special assistant under former A’s GM Sandy Alderson, he was director of player personnel under Beane. He knew as much as anybody what the A’s had available in the organization.
Riccardi was long-since gone when perhaps the most impactful trade came between the A’s and Jays after the 2014 season. Oakland sent All-Star third baseman Josh Donaldson to the Jays, getting back infielder Franklin Barreto, third baseman Brett Lawrie and pitchers Kendall Graveman and Sean Nolin.
Nolin was out of baseball after one year, Lawrie after two and Graveman, often injured, was 23-29 during his time in Oakland, which ended with 2018’s reconstructive elbow surgery. He is with the Mariners now.
Donaldson, meanwhile, won the American League Most Valuable Player award in his first year with the Jays and, after an injury-troubled 2018 season, hit 37 homers with the Braves last year, earning a four-year, $92 million deal with the Twins.
Just for the record, the A’s have more frequent partners than anybody. They’ve done 19 deals with the Royals from 1998-on, 18 with the Padres and 17 with the Cubs. Those all rank in the top 10 of frequent deal partnerships.
Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3
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