Today in Blue Jays History: Jays trade for Tulowitzki

Five years ago today, the Blue Jays traded for Troy Tulowitzki.

The deal was: Troy Tulowitzki and LaTroy Hawkins for Jose Reyes, Jeff Hoffman, Miguel Castro, and Jesus Tinoco.

It is one of those trades that worked at the time. We got to the playoff. But we have been paying Troy a lot of money not to play baseball. We paid him $14 million last year to not play for us and $4 million this year, as a buyout for the option year. He did get 13 at-bats for the Yankees, before retiring and, of course, hit a home run off Marcus Stroman, in spring training. That filled my twitter feed with whining people who didn’t understand baseball “how could the Jays release him”.

Troy hit .250/.313/.414 in 36 home runs in 238 games over 3 seasons for the Jays.

I wonder how his time with the Jays would have been without the terrible injury he suffered when his ankle rolled slipping off first base (also on this day, back in 2017). He was 32 at the time. He could have had a few more good seasons and maybe built the raw numbers to get him close to a Hall of Fame career.

When he was healthy he was fun to watch. The side arm throws from short were things of beauty.

LaTroy Hawkins pitched in 18 games for the Jays in 2015 and retired after the season. He had a 2.76 ERA in 16.1 innings. He didn’t have a good time in the playoffs, pitching in 3 games, 1.2 innings, allowing 7 earned runs.

The players that went to the Rockies:

Jose Reyes finished the season hitting .259/.291/.368 for the Rockies. Jose got suspended for the start of the 2016 season for ‘violating the domestic violence policy’. At the end of the suspension, the Rockies released him. He signed with the Mets and had 3 mediocre seasons and was let go after the 2018 season.Jef

Hoffman was the big piece going to Denver. He hasn’t lived up to his prospect status. In parts of 4 seasons, Jeff has a 6-15 record and a 6.11 ERA in 52 games, 38 starts. He’s on the Rockies roster but hasn’t pitched yet this year.

Castro didn’t do much for the Rockies, pitching in 24 games over two seasons, with a 7.20 ERA. He was traded to the Orioles and has been an ok middle reliever for them.

Tinoco got into 24 for games for the Rockies last year, with a 4.75 ERA. He’s on their roster this year.

At the time, we liked the trade. Our poll was 75% liked it. 18% neutral, and 7% hate it.

It’s tough to say if the trade was a good thing or not. We needed to get rid of Reyes, and that was the trade available. We did make the playoffs twice. Would we have without Tulo? I don’t know.

Also on this day, last year, Bo Bichette was called up and baseball was much more fun.