Get out your black arm bands. It was one year ago today that we traded Doc.
It seems to have worked out for the Phillies. 21-10, 2.44 in 33 starts, 250.2 innings. A perfect game. A Cy Young Award. A no hitter in the playoffs. They would have liked to go deeper into the playoffs but even Doc can't win them all.
It will be a little while before we figure out if it worked for us. Kyle Drabek looked like the real thing at Double A New Hampshire. 14-9, 2.94 in 27 starts. Despite 3 loses in his 3 major league starts (we only scored 5 runs for him), he showed enough, at least to me, to think that he can hold his own in the majors now and grow from there.
Travis d'Arnaud didn't have a great season with the bat at Dunedin, hitting .259/.315/.411, but then it is a pitcher's league and he is just 21. He's at least a couple of years away.
Michael Taylor was flipped for Brett Wallace who was traded for Anthony Gose. To be honest, I'm not sure we wouldn't have been better off just to stick with Taylor, since we really could use another outfielder. But then Taylor had a poor season at Triple-A for Oakland and he turns 25 this weekend.
Then we went half the season figuring Brett Wallace would be playing first base for us by 2011 and for the next 10 years. But then Brett didn't tear up Las Vegas like we hoped he would (though he wasn't bad, I'd take a .301/.359/.509 line anyday) then had 150 bad at bats with the Astros.
Out goes Wallace in comes Anthony Gose, a 20 year old that, though he hasn't put up great stats yet, has all the tools to be terrific. Great speed, great arm, can cover a ton of ground in CF. We have to take it on faith that the bat will come.
How much better would the Jays been last year if we hadn't traded him. I refuse to believe that having the best pitcher in baseball would be a bad thing, as much as the team played up how well the starters got along. But we were 10 games out of a playoff spot and even Doc wouldn't make that much of a difference. I also think that without that trade some other moves, that worked out well, might not have happened. I'm also not sure the Jays would have been so patient with Brandon Morrow if last year would have been our last with Doc.
It is sort of a Wonderful Life thing. You never know how one change is going to effect everything else.