By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
February 14, 2014
It is still unclear if it will go down in Detroit sports history on the level of Adam Oates and Paul MacLean for Bernie Federko and Tony McKegney or Chauncey Billups for Allen Iverson, but the Tigers’ trade of Doug Fister to the Washington Nationals is still getting panned nationally.
The yield for one of the Top 20 starting pitchers in baseball had already been savaged by ESPN’s Keith Law — who called Dave Dombrowski’s trade haul for Fister “30 cents on the dollar” — and by Fangraph’s SABR writer Dave Cameron.
The heist deal never made sense from day one, which is why I went to Comerica Park for the Joe Nathan press conference and grilled the Tigers General Manager about his acquisition of Steve Lombardozzi (Italian Ramon Santiago), Ian Krol (Phil Coke Redux) and Robbie Ray (Poor Man’s Andrew Miller) for a very reliable #3 starter, especially during the postseason.
And while many fans continue to be irate about trading Fister for a utility infielder, a situational lefty and a project southpaw starter who didn’t make either Baseball America‘s or Law’s list of the Top 100 prospects in the game, the Detroit media has continued to defend this Dombrowski blunder.
The Freep‘s John Lowe issued a preemptive strike in a recent online chat, defending the deal before he was EVEN ASKED. Lowe claimed the Tigers needed to insert lefty Drew Smyly into the rotation and totally ignored the VALUE aspect of the trade.
Dombrowski’s agent, Public Relations czar and vocal admirer, Lynn Henning, has defended the trade from every angle even cherry-picking some of Fister’s stats to provide the illusion that the tall righty is on a downward career spiral.
He also continues his asinine mantra that fans never approve of a trade of the known for the unknown. Like we are all a bunch of bumbling imbeciles who don’t have instant Internet access to Robbie Ray’s prospect grade.
Anyway, well-respected ESPN baseball writer Jayson Stark released his monstrous Spring Training preview today. In it, he quizzed “23 all-knowing baseball executives who were kind enough to take part in our 2014 spring training preview survey” to get a read on the offseason moves of MLB teams and their prospects for the coming year.
One of the questions he asked the 23 execs was what was the best trade of the Hot Stove League. Well, you probably can guess that answer …..
The Nationals take the gold for springing what our voters clearly viewed as one of the all-time heists, getting underrated rotation force Doug Fister from Detroit for just a useful utility guy (Steve Lombardozzi), an effective left-handed reliever (Ian Krol) and a pitching prospect (Robbie Ray) whom the Tigers view as having bigger upside than virtually every other team we’ve asked about him. Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski is so good at his job, he always gets the benefit of the doubt. But one exec who admires Dombrowski still found himself calling this trade “an epic head-scratcher.” It should tell you something that this deal got 14 votes in our poll, and no other trade got more than five.
The Nationals’ FLEECING of Dombrowski received FOURTEEN of the votes. A fucking MAJORITY. The deal that shills like Lowe and Henning continue to defend won the “Best Trade” poll in a god damn landslide. It doesn’t take too much of an imagination to come up with the “Worst Trade.”
“An epic head-scratcher.”
This trade will NEVER make any sense and it took a freaking insurance appraiser to question If Dombrowski had done his “due diligence” when trading a precious asset.
Well, he claims he did.
14 baseball execs and the entire national baseball press beg to differ, Dave.