as Larkin puts it<\/a>: \u201cI feel as if I\u2019m being held hostage by a team with no immediate plans to be competitive.\u201d<\/p>\nLarkin had a no-trade clause, but was willing to be traded to five teams, which included the Cardinals. That\u2019s interesting because the Cardinals did not have a particularly good 90s and didn\u2019t have a good 1999 season either, although Larkin would have helped. But I\u2019ll give some credit to Jim Bowden, who didn\u2019t seem to usually make smart moves. He held out for JD Drew and Rick Ankiel. Larkin had one great year and one good year left, so that would have been a bad trade by the Cardinals. Walt Jocketty thought so too.<\/p>\n
So they pivoted. And this is really why I\u2019m writing the article. Because there are a few confusing aspects of the Edgar Renteria trade that followed. It\u2019s the kind of trade that reveals how different front offices operated as it pertained to value than today\u2019s game. The structure of that trade would not get made today. Decisions made prior to that trade would not get made today either.<\/p>\n
And it starts with Braden Looper. Looper was the 3rd overall pick in the 1996 MLB Draft out of Wichita State University. Highest draft pick the Cardinals have ever had. And they drafted him that high knowing, essentially, that he would be a reliever. I mean they envisioned a closer, but still. What is the absolute highest round a team will draft someone knowing they will be a reliever now? We all knew the Cardinals would convert Tanner Franklin to starting specifically because of how high he was drafted and he was drafted 72nd. Looper was the THIRD OVERALL PICK.<\/p>\n
He did start games at first, but barely. He signed late in the 1996 season, so he didn\u2019t pitch in his draft year. This wasn\u2019t for modern reasons like saving his arm, the draft pick signing deadline was VERY late in the season and a lot of the high picks used all of that time to come to an agreement. He started 12 games at High A in 1997, wasn\u2019t particularly impressive, and then they converted him to reliever. After 12 starts. They promoted him to AA and also moved him to the bullpen at the same time. He honestly still wasn\u2019t that good.<\/p>\n
So of course, he made the team out of spring training in 1998. They gave him all of 4 games before they sent him to Memphis. All of this is impossible to wrap my head around. They used a high draft pick and immediately converted him to relief. And with not very good minor league stats and not even at AAA, he made the majors, and they were so confident in this decision that he got demoted after 4 games. He actually struck out 25% of the batters he faced, which is like 30% nowadays, but gave up 4 runs (2 were not earned). He spent the rest of the year in Memphis.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s not the only weird part of that trade. Looper wasn\u2019t actually the highest rated prospect in the trade. Which doesn\u2019t sound that weird when I describe Looper the player, but he was the 23rd best prospect in Baseball America. There was no doubt he was a reliever when they ranked him. It is not strange that there was a more valuable prospect than him, but somehow the player ranked above him was weirder.<\/p>\n
Pablo Ozuna was the #8 prospect in baseball when this trade was made according to Baseball America. Walt Jocketty got extremely lucky on this one. The Cardinals had signed Ozuna at 16-years-old in 1996 out of the Dominican Republic and if you go to his stats page, you will notice he was not actually 16 in 1996. He could have graduated college in 1996. He was actually 22-years-old.<\/p>\n
This was not known at the time of the trade. As far as anybody knew, Ozuna was about to be 19 in 1999. He had just batted .357 in Low A and had stolen 62 bases. In reality, he was 23-years-old and also he got caught stealing 26 times. Which is a horrible success rate. And I guess teams didn\u2019t learn what a good success rate was, because he was allowed to be a bad base stealer for his whole career.<\/p>\n
So we have the #8 prospect in baseball and the #23 prospect in baseball, but it was a magic act. It was a soon-to-be 24-year-old who hadn\u2019t played above A ball and a relief pitcher. There was a third player involved, but he had to be considered a throw-in. I can\u2019t imagine this guy had real value then. Armando Almanza was a soon-to-be 26-year-old left-handed relief pitcher with swing-and-miss stuff but spotty control who hadn\u2019t actually pitched in the majors yet.<\/p>\n
For two relief pitchers, one of whom is barely a prospect, and a super old for his level infielder who is bad at stealing bases, the Cardinals received four years of 22-year-old shortstop who had 3.5 fWAR as a 19-year-old and then kind of underwhelmed in his next two seasons. You could not ask for a better trade or a better acquisition for the future.<\/p>\n
Baseball Prospectus, weirdly obsessed with him maybe being a year younger than he said (it\u2019s mentioned in SIX of their yearly profiles), said this about Renteria: \u201cGood comparisons would be Barry Larkin or Alan Trammell: the power should keep getting better; he\u2019ll take a few more walks and have a shot at an MVP award someday. While he isn\u2019t an ideal leadoff man, the Cardinals don\u2019t have many alternatives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Didn\u2019t quite work out that way, although he did have a couple All-Star caliber seasons. After 1999, the Cardinals signed him to a four-year extension with two club options. They picked up his 2004 option, but confusingly apparently the 2005 option was voided because they waited too long to pick up the 2004 option. If anybody has any information on that, I would love to know. I have not heard that one in baseball before. David Eckstein ended up being better than Renteria in 2005, so it worked out, but I definitely would have done one more year with Renteria. They tried to sign him in free agency too, so this wasn\u2019t a no interest situation.<\/p>\n
Anyway, this is a perfect Walt Jocketty trade and also\u2026 a very lucky Walt Jocketty trade. I really doubt he knew Pablo Ozuna was older than he said. Ozuna\u2019s real age was revealed in 2002 thanks to the September 11th attacks, when foreign-born players had to show their birth certificate to apply for a work visa. Nearly 300 players saw their birthdays change from this. Overnight Ozuna was four years older and a utility player, not a highly touted prospect. And he also did draft Looper 3rd overall, so it\u2019s not like he didn\u2019t agree with the consensus that relievers could be very valuable.<\/p>\n
But I will also say for a guy who was known for trading for veterans, our past looks a lot different if he decides to trade for Barry Larkin. Renteria was, mostly, not as good as you remember, because his bat wasn\u2019t very good in his Cardinals tenure – the run environment then was crazy in the steroid era – however he did peak more in line with when the Cardinals were genuine title contenders. Larkin had already peaked, although he did have a peak season left in 1999, but that wouldn\u2019t have made the Cardinals a playoff team.<\/p>\n
More importantly, they held onto JD Drew who later net the Cardinals Adam Wainwright. Imagine that alternate history where the Cardinals get Larkin! He would have pivoted, but it is very difficult to imagine the last 25 years going as well as they did if they made that Larkin trade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cardinals had found their replacement for Ozzie Smith, but you don\u2019t actually want to be the guy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2403],"tags":[5,160,4,6213,673,67,4311,4310,38503],"class_list":["post-692691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-louis-cardinals","tag-baseball","tag-cardinals","tag-mlb","tag-st-louis-cardinals-news","tag-st-louis","tag-st-louis-cardinals","tag-stlouis","tag-stlouiscardinals","tag-veb-daily"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116533541150077455","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}