How Much Do Deadline Deals Help?

by JA, The Feed

The rumor mill is churning like crazy around Major League Baseball today as we're within two hours of the trading deadline and contenders try to find the missing piece of their puzzle. It remains to be seen if Mark Teixeira helps the Braves to a division title or if Luis Castillo will help the Mets hold off the charging club from Atlanta, but what we can do is look back at lessons learned from some past champions and also-rans to see how much deadline deals this century helped the teams.

2006 - The Cardinals picked up Ronnie Belliard from Cleveland at the deadline and his .237 average probably does more to explain their 83-79 regular season mark than their playoff success. He hit .240 in the playoffs and was hitless in the World Series. Jeff Weaver, picked up in early July, won three games in the playoffs, though he was mediocre down the stretch. They probably wouldn't have won in October without Weaver. The AL-best Tigers added Sean Casey in a move that allowed them to drop the slumping Chris Shelton back to the minor leagues. The biggest deadline deal of last summer was the one that sent Bobby Abreu to the Yankees. He was great down the stretch and helped them to the playoffs where things didn't go their way.

2005 - Ozzie Guillen's White Sox didn't need much help on their way to a championship but the one guy they picked up paid huge dividends. Geoff Blum was picked up for a minor leaguer and spent most of his time on the bench but he delivered a two-run game-winning home run in the 14th inning of World Series Game Three to help the White Sox toward their sweep of Houston. There wasn't much excitement anywhere at that year's deadline unless names like Joe Randa, Randy Winn and Shawn Chacon get your juices flowing.

2004 - The big mamma jamma of recent deadline sessions saw the Red Sox part ways with Nomar Garciaparra in a four-way swap that landed them Orlando Cabrera and Doug Mientkiewicz. No one would argue that Curt Schilling's bloody sock, David Ortiz's clutch hitting and Pedro's midget friend weren't the keys to Boston's title but the difference of the July 30 Red Sox and the August 1 team was striking. The face of the franchise changed and finally fortune smiled upon them in October. Less lucky were the Mets who traded Ty Wigginton and Scott Kazmir for Kris Benson and Victor Zambrano, respectively. They got 24 wins and myriad headaches for their trouble. A stealth winner of the 2004 trading season was the Royals. In June they moved Carlos Beltran for John Buck and Mark Teahen. While the Royals remain a second-division outfit, Buck and Teahen have been productive while Beltran bolted for Shea after the season.

2003 - There were a flurry of deals in July 2003 but only one of them included the eventual champion Marlins. It was a nifty deal as they added Ugueth Urbina to their bullpen. He had a 1.41 ERA during the season and saved four games in the playoffs to help the Marlins past two teams that made major trades. The Cubs dealt for Aramis Ramirez and Kenny Lofton but forgot to ship Steve Bartman out of town while the Yankees picked up Armando Benitez (later traded to Seattle), Jesse Orosco, Dan Miceli, Gabe White and Aaron Boone. Boone's home run against Boston made his pickup worthwhile but the other moves, plus trades that rid them of Raul Mondesi and Robin Ventura, were the effect of a poorly constructed team trying to rebuild on the fly.

2002 - The Angels made two in-house moves instead of trades en route to the 2002 crown. Those moves landed John Lackey and Francisco Rodriguez in the big leagues and each man helped the effort mightily as the Angels won the first championship in their franchise history. The NL Champion Giants added Kenny Lofton, in a deal for Ryan Meaux who would later bring the White Sox Geoff Blum, but the NLCS losing Cardinals were the most active team. They added Chuck Finley to the rotation and Scott Rolen at third base and both played well without costing St. Louis all that much. The Mets, who finished 75-86, did pay a lot for Steve Reed when they sent Jason Bay to San Diego for the journeyman reliever.

2001 - Arizona's one trade pickup, Albie Lopez, went 0-2 with a 9.95 ERA in the playoffs after doing a fair job as their fifth starter in the regular season. The biggest name dealt in the National League was Jason Schmidt who went from Pittsburgh to San Francisco but couldn't help the Giants win either the division or the wild card. The Yankees added Sterling Hitchcock to the last run of Paul O'Neill, Scott Brosius and company but he didn't do much while the A's made the best trade of the season when they brought Jermaine Dye and his 13 home runs to Oakland in an ultimately futile attempt at a title.

2000 - The Yankees made several deals in late June and July that brought in helpful parts David Justice, Glenallen Hill and Jose Vizcaino but no blockbusters. That trio bolstered the three-peat effort while across town the Mets mortgaged a bit of their future by sending Melvin Mora and Jason Tyner out for Mike Bordick, Rick White and Bubba Trammell. Among teams that missed the Fall Classic, Will Clark helped out the Cardinals with a splendid two months but the Giants sold low on Scott Linebrink in a deal for Doug Henry.

There were a lot more deals in the Julys of each decade and this list doesn't include Montreal's June 2002 debacle that sent Grady Sizemore, Brandon Phillips and Cliff Lee to Cleveland for a misguided run at October behind Bartolo Colon. The history above shows us that with the exception of the Red Sox in '04 the teams that ended up champions didn't radically remake their team with two months to play. Tweaking the bench and/or the bullpen pays off but the teams that made bigger deals (Abreu, Dye, Rolen, Schmidt) fell short because they were either fundamentally flawed beyond those players or they ran into a better team that didn't need a ton of deals to put them in the playoff mix.