The baseball trade deadline is just five days away and it’s a nerve racking team for teams and players and fans. It’s the time of year where a team can strike up a deal that could potentially win them the World Series. Unfortunately, there’s maybe more of a chance that a team could severely hurt themselves for the future by trading away valuable prospects for a two month rental.
The worst of these trades in recent years was between the Atlanta Braves and the Texas Rangers. The Braves, thinking they were in playoff contention, traded for Rangers All Star first baseman Mark Teixeira. To land him the Braves had to send the Rangers four of their most valuable prospects: Jarod Saltalamacchia, Elvis Andrus, Neftali Feliz and Matt Harrison.
Saltalamacchia is now the Red Sox starting catcher, which doesn’t really matter because the Braves have baseball’s best catcher in Brian McCann. However, Andrus, Feliz and Harrison have all become productive parts of a winning Rangers team and the Braves could definitely use all three of those parts right about now.
Teixeira didn’t help lead the Braves to the playoffs that year, despite having a very hot two months with them. He wasn’t just a two month rental either as he was under contract for one more year … but, Teixeira simply became a one year rental as the Braves knowing they didn’t have the money to re-sign him were forced to trade him to the Angels for Casey Kotchmann at the next year’s trade deadline. Kotchmann didn’t do much of anything for Atlanta and Teixeira finished out the year with the Angels before signing a mega-deal with the Yankees as a free agent. The damage was done however as the Braves basically stripped a good part of their future for what turned out to be almost nothing.
Teams should beware that the bright lights of the impending playoffs are not always worth giving away your future.
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