The Chicago Cubs trade P Scott Garrelts, OF Dan Pasqua, 3B Scott Brosius, and CF Cecil Espy to the Toronto Blue Jays for INF George Arias, OF Roberto Kelly, OF Pat Watkins, and OF Lance Johnson.
Finally.
After weeks of middle infielders changing teams like spare batteries and the Seattle Pilots auctioning off their entire franchise one Craigslist post at a time, we get an honest-to-goodness deadline baseball trade.
Contender buys pitching.
Seller moves veterans.
Everyone pretends the outfield depth pieces matter.
Full disclosure: I wrote this article three different times and gave Chicago three different grades. That’s usually the sign of either a complicated trade… or a slightly confusing one.
Let’s start with the team actually trying to win games this year.
Toronto: The Mets Made a Move… So Toronto Did Too
The Blue Jays are currently in a knife fight with the New York Mets for the final UL playoff spot.
The Mets’ response to that pressure?
Go out and acquire Randy Johnson and Darren Holmes.
Toronto’s response?
Scott Garrelts.
Which, honestly, is not a bad answer.
Garrelts returns from injury next week and has been excellent this season:
- 8–2 record
- 3.11 ERA
- 134 ERA+
For several seasons now he’s been one of the better pitchers in the league, quietly doing his job while flashier names grab headlines.
The only knock? He’s 35 years old.
Toronto’s response to that concern appears to be: “We’ll worry about 1999 in 1999.”
They needed a legitimate #2 starter behind Hipolito Pichardo, and they just got one.
Now let’s talk about the rest of the package.
Dan Pasqua returns to Toronto roughly one month after being traded away, which hopefully means he kept the receipt for his moving truck.
Scott Brosius adds corner infield depth.
Cecil Espy… well, Cecil Espy exists. His bat hasn’t frightened major-league pitching since the late 1980s, but the glove still works. Toronto will likely stick him in center field, bat him ninth, and hope nobody notices.
Between Espy and Brian McRae, center field remains a bit of an adventure — but that’s the cost of acquiring real pitching.
Chicago: Welcome to the Fire Sale
Meanwhile in Chicago, the Cubs continue their enthusiastic participation in the “Everything Must Go” portion of the season.
Pasqua, Brosius, and Espy are perfectly fine players, but none of them were the reason this trade happened. The real asset here was Garrelts, one of the Cubs’ most attractive trade chips.
And he brought back… an interesting package.
Chicago eats all the salary this year and next year and doesn’t receive a single draft pick in return, which tells you quite a bit about how the current market is treating sellers.
Instead, they take a couple of swings.
George Arias returns to Chicago only a month after being written about in these pages when Toronto acquired him from Charlotte. The funny part? In that article I compared Arias’ profile to Scott Brosius.
Baseball is weird sometimes.
Pat Watkins is a defense-first center fielder on an entry-level deal, which could become useful if Rich Becker leaves in free agency.
Roberto Kelly and Lance Johnson are here largely to make the roster math work and perhaps keep the clubhouse from becoming entirely populated by prospects.
In other words: Chicago traded a valuable veteran pitcher for two interesting lottery tickets and some roster ballast.
Which might work. Eventually.
Big Picture
Toronto needed pitching and acted like a contender.
Chicago needed future pieces and kept the garage sale open.
One team is chasing October.
The other is chasing draft position.
And both probably feel pretty good about how it went.
Trade Grades
Chicago Cubs: B+
They add some upside in Arias and Watkins, though eating all that salary without getting a pick still feels slightly painful.
Toronto Blue Jays: A+
They land one of the better available starters without touching draft picks they didn’t have anyway.
At this point, Toronto has made a habit of pulling off these deals despite having no picks, limited prospects, and the trade leverage of a garage sale coupon.
If the league ever hands out an award for Most Creative Trader With Limited Assets, we might as well engrave the Blue Jays’ name on it now.