Folks, I'll be honest. I'm making posts on team subreddits to commemorate trade anniversaries as a means of promoting my self-explanatory Substack, Trades Ten Years Later. I posted in the Yankees subreddit about the anniversary of them getting Didi Gregorius and in the Diamondbacks subreddit about them getting Robbie Ray.
I'm posting the Detroit end for completion, but I have no idea why a Tigers fan would want to subscribe to my blog right now. As you might recall, the Tigers were a juggernaut in the first part of the 2010s, and as you probably recall, the Tigers had a playoff drought that lasted from 2014 until that magical 2024 run. The Tigers got David Price at the trade deadline, which was really cool, but basically every trade after that was some form of disaster. I wrote about Devon Travis for Anthony Gose last week and Eugenio Suarez for Alfredo Simon is coming soon. At the next trade deadline, David Price gets traded away for the guy who lived in a van and Matt Boyd. If I were you, I would probably think that all of this "sucks" and was "depressing."
For instance, in this one, the Yankees were keen on swapping Shane Greene for Didi Gregorius. The Diamondbacks didn't want Shane Greene, so this three-team deal was worked out where Greene went to Detroit and Arizona got younger players. Greene was a 15th-round pick who had a strong debut as a starter in 2014, while Robbie Ray was a better prospect who arrived in the Doug Fister trade and then had a down season. At the time, Arizona's side of the swap was seen as particularly confusing, with Jeff Sullivan at Fangraphs on the record preferring Greene to Ray and Leyba.
For a few glorious weeks, he was right, as Greene only allowed one earned run in three starts (23 innings). Then it got much much much much worse, with 63 earned runs in the next 60.2 innings. Greene was optioned to AAA and finished his season with -1.7 WAR, emerging as a (still wildly inconsistent) reliever who scraped together enough consistency to get traded away during a 2019 All-Star season.
Robbie Ray also became a pretty inconsistent pitcher, but using a much more complimentary form of that adjective. The bad version was a walk-prone MLB starter, while the best versions won the Cy Young. Fortunately for the sake of this trade, Ray didn't put together a Cy Young season until the Diamondbacks had given up on him and traded him to Toronto during the worst season of his career. At least it could've been worse!
Sorry to bring you this reminder. If this scratches a masochism itch, a (much) longer discussion of this trade and a few others can be found at Trades Ten Years Later
5 comments
Well written and detailed, thank you for sharing.
Part of me will always think that DD gave up on Ray too soon due to criticism of the Fister trade, very likely from Mike Ilitch (I doubt he cared about fan criticism.)
I’m looking forward to the Suarez-Simon trade retrospective. One of the worst moves DD has ever made for any team.
To be fair, Greene’s quick demotion from starter to reliever seems to have stemmed from his diagnosis of a pseudoaneurysm in his right hand. I remember reading an article about it, where Greene described it as losing all feeling in his fingers. Hard to pitch in the MLB without feeling in your fingers. He looked totally legit at first and is a big what-if had he stayed healthy.
Ahhh I remember hating it at the time so so so much. Anthony Gose and Shane Greene. What a joke.
Big Pasta trade was so infuriating at the time. I remember it leaked early in the day that the Tigers were trading for a Reds starter. Everyone figured it was for Bailey or Leake but just maybe it’ll be Cueto. Then we all got blindsided it was the fat 30 year old.