Today in Blue Jays History: The Big Trade

It was 27 years ago today that Stand Pat Gillick made the biggest trade in Blue Jay history. Tony Fernandez and Fred McGriff went to the Padres for Roberto Alomar and Joe Carter.

I'll admit, at the time, I wasn't a big fan of the trade. We had a team that was in the race for the playoffs each season for the past few. In 1985 and 1989 we made it to the playoffs. Then, suddenly, we trade the best shortstop the team ever had and a first baseman that, I thought, had a shot to be in the Hall of Fame one day.

We got back:

• A 23 year old second baseman who had a .283/.339/.379 batting line (with 90 stolen bases vs. 30 time caught) and a flare for the spectacular on defense. I didn't see a Hall of Fame player there. What I should have noticed was a player that came up at age 20 and more than held his own, at that young age. The thing I did like was that we finally had a player that, I thought, would be a great leadoff hitter. Course, we never used him in the leadoff spot. Cito liked Devon White there. A couple of years later, we signed Paul Molitor and I remember the guy on TSN saying we ‘finally had a leadoff hitter’ and I was thinking no we had one who would be great, we just didn’t use him in that spot. We wouldn’t hit Molitor leadoff either.
• An outfielder, who would be 31 next season, who seemed overrated. His best stat was RBI. The season before (his only one with the Padres) he hit .232/.290/.391 with 24 home runs and 115 RBI. Before that, he had 6 seasons with the Indians, hitting .269/.309/.472. We would never call a player like that a star these days.

The trade worked out, though I wonder if, in the alternate universe where the Jays didn't make the trade, we would have won a couple of World Series anyway. But then, there is no way we could have had a better finish than we had in the 1993 game with Joe Carter hitting that home run.

We held on to Joe for too long. His last few years with the team weren't very good and Alomar left the team as a free agent, but for a couple of years, they helped make the Jays the best team in baseball and gave us a lot of great memories.

It was one of those trades that the teams kind of got equal value out of the players, but we won two World Series, so we won the trade.