It’s almost as if with every game the Arizona Diamondbacks played this month a little bit more salt was poured into the wounds of a Blue Jays organization that was left battered and bruised following another humiliating post-season exit.
While the Jays were off doing who knows what after getting swept by the Minnesota Twins in the American League wild-card series, a pair of their former players were getting set to take on pivotal roles in Tuesday night’s win-or-go-home Game 7 of the NL Championship Series vs. the Philadelphia Phillies.
Catcher Gabriel Moreno and left fielder Lourdes Gurriel Jr. Two players who used to be a source of inspiration around these parts now represent a black eye of sorts for an organization that traded them away for light-hitting outfielder Daulton Varsho.
The move, intended to put the Jays over the hump, backfired. While Varsho struggled throughout his first season in Toronto, Moreno and Gurriel proved vital to Arizona’s success. The D-Backs wouldn’t have made it to within one win of a World Series without them and that alone makes last year’s deal a clear win from their perspective.
Gurriel smashed 24 homers for the D-Backs this season and he entered Tuesday with two more in the playoffs, including one during Monday’s must-win Game 6. Moreno’s defence shined all year, and he already has three homers to go along with a clutch game-winning single on his post-season resume.
Varsho, meanwhile, is coming off a 0-for-5 performance with three strikeouts in the wild-card series. His performance was equally as bad during the regular season when 20 homers were accompanied by an underwhelming .220 average and a .674 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, which was well below the league average of .730.
Read the counterpoint from Mike Wilner: The Gabriel Moreno trade looks great for the Diamondbacks. Here’s how it could still be a win for the Blue Jays
The early returns have been decisively negative for the Jays. It’s hard to argue otherwise, which leaves the architects with no choice but to try and spin this narrative in a different direction.
“Over the season, still feel like that was a good trade,” Jays president Mark Shapiro recently said. “You can’t evaluate a trade in the short term, you’ve got to give it four or five years to understand whether a trade was effective or not.”
The D-Backs beg to differ. They don’t need another four or five years to evaluate the deal, they don’t even require another four or five weeks. The returns they experienced in 2023 have already made the move worthwhile no matter what transpires down the road.
The Jays didn’t have any regrets when they traded borderline Hall of Famer Jeff Kent for two months of David Cone in 1992. They wouldn’t have experienced any second thoughts if pitching prospects Daniel Norris and Matt Boyd turned into superstars after being shipped out for David Price in 2015 either. Arizona finds itself in a similar boat now.
The D-Backs didn’t acquire Gurriel and Moreno to go all-in for 2023, but their play pushed the organization in that direction anyways. After winning a wild-card series over the Milwaukee Brewers, and pushing past the Dodgers in Round 2, trading Varsho would have been an acceptable cost even if they only had Moreno and Gurriel for this season.
And while Gurriel will indeed test free agency in November, Moreno still has five years of control remaining, which seems especially cruel considering Varsho has three.
“The kid’s a star,” TBS play-by-play broadcaster Brian Anderson announced after Moreno hit a go-ahead single in a Game 4 win over the Phillies.
The profusive praise throughout these playoffs for Moreno must be a bit nauseating for the Jays’ front office. General manager Ross Atkins admitted last December that his advisors had been split on the deal. Some executives felt moving Moreno would be something they’d live to regret, others believed it a was a manageable cost to pay for Varsho’s much-needed lefty bat.
The room wouldn’t be so divided now because nobody in their right mind would do the Jays’ side of the deal again. While Varsho’s trade value plummeted following his extensive struggles, Moreno’s has gone through the roof as one of the game’s rising stars.
To be fair, just because the trade is a clear loss for the Jays in October of 2023 doesn’t mean it will stay that way forever. Varsho’s coming off a difficult season, but his glove remains elite, and it should bring even more value next year following a transition to centre.
Offensively, the tools are there. He hit 27 homers for the D-Backs in 2022 and he could easily top 30 in the future. The 27-year-old is an excellent candidate to experience a bounce back season and there’s a very real chance this deal won’t look quite as lopsided a year or two from now.
Still, that doesn’t change the fact that after Year 1, Varsho’s performance resembled that of a defensive specialist like Bradley Zimmer more than it did an everyday player while Gurriel became an all-star and Moreno showed he might become one in the future.
A lot of people consider the 2000 trade of second baseman Michael Young for right-hander Esteban Loaiza to be the worst trade in Jays franchise history. In that deal, they traded away a top prospect, who finished his career with 2,375 hits, for an underachieving starter.
The Varsho deal isn’t that bad — at least not yet — but the fact that it could still become comparable must be alarming for a franchise that is running out of chances to prove it can win a playoff round. The D-Backs have done that twice already this year and on Tuesday they had a chance to make it a third.
That success wouldn’t have been possible without Moreno and Gurriel. The D-Backs have already won this trade, the only question left is whether Varsho and Jays can narrow the margin of defeat.
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