Today in Blue Jays History: Travis/Gose Trade, Edwin claimed by Oakland

Today in Blue Jays history:

One Year Ago:

Former Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos was hired for the GM job of the Braves. I said at the time that I might have a new favorite NL team but I also said:

Congratulation Alex. I wish you the best of luck, except when you are playing the Jays. Perhaps your first move could be banning the ‘tomahawk chop’?

Well, as the playoffs showed, he didn’t ban it and it made it impossible for me to cheer for his team.

Four years ago:

The Jays traded Anthony Gose to the Tigers for Devon Travis. It was a trade I didn’t see coming, and it seemed pretty amazing that we could get Travis for Gose. Gose was a player with all the talent in the world, who couldn’t seem to turn that talent into production.

In parts of 3 seasons, Gose had hit .234/.301/.332 with 34 steals. Travis was blocked from the majors by Ian Kinsler, so the Tigers really didn’t have a place for him.

Since the trade, Travis has missed a fair bit of time with injuries. When healthy, he’s hit .274/.314/.437 with 35 homers in 316 games.

2018 was his first, at least relatively, injury free season. It didn’t go great. He hit .232/.272/.381 in, a career high, 103 games. It has us questioning his future with the team, considering we seem to be loaded with infield prospects.

Gose? Well, he played parts of two seasons with the Tigers, hitting .247/.315/.363, with 23 steals (caught 12 times). Over the past couple of seasons Gose has been trying his luck as a pitcher. This year, splitting time between A and AA in the Rangers system, he had a 5.19 ERA in 26 innings of work. He had 24 strikeouts, but 25 walks. At the moment he is a free agent.

At the time we liked the trade:

It has turned out to be a good trade, but it would be so much better if Travis could have stayed healthy.

Eight Years Ago:

Man, time flies.

The Oakland A’s claimed Edwin Encarnacion off waivers from us. Looking back, this could have been the worst moment in Jays history. Edwin put on waivers (along with Brian Tallet and DeWayne Wise) to make room, on the 40-man, for Rommie Lewis Jesse Litsch and Dustin McGowan.

Fortunately, the A’s let Edwin become a free agent and we signed him again. It’s tough to imagine us making the playoffs in 2015 and 2016 without Edwin

The comment thread of our post on the subject is pretty interesting. Some were thrilled Edwin was gone (many were more thrilled Tallet was gone). Some thought we were calling Alex Anthopoulos an idiot because we disagreed with the move.

In the end it turned out Billy Beane was the idiot. We were very very lucky we got him back.

Eight Years Ago:

Jon Heyman told us that the Yankees were interested in trading for Roy Halladay. I was suicidal.