Comments on: Remembering a bad trade from 1999

By: Past Trade Review: Denny Neagle | River Avenue Blues

Past Trade Review: Denny Neagle | River Avenue Blues — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 19:33:22 +0000

[...] in the game before the 2000 season, and of course the Yankees originally acquired him in the ill-fated Mike Lowell trade. Yarnall had appeared in seven total games with the Yanks in 1999 and 2000, though he predictably [...]

By: As Mick Jagger once said… | River Avenue Blues

As Mick Jagger once said… | River Avenue Blues — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 05:40:48 +0000

[...] but the Yankees did not want to part with Lowell. (That they would do so a few months later and get nothing good in return remains one of Cashman’s worst trades of all time.) The Yankees were left empty-handed at the [...]

By: River Ave. Blues » Re-imagining the Yankee Dynasty

River Ave. Blues » Re-imagining the Yankee Dynasty — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 06:14:17 +0000

[...] Lowell. It was all too high. Ironically, when Mike Lowell was traded five months later, the returns were meager. I can only wonder what changed — other than one great Scott Brosius season — in the [...]

By: TheFeed

TheFeed — Tue, 01 May 2007 21:30:21 +0000

I’ll just second mehmattski’s point that Yarnall was a pretty well regarded prospect and that’s part of the deal you make when you go after pitching prospects. When they made the deal Brosius was coming off a fantastic season and team saw a chance to add depth and promise to the starting rotation, sort of like this year’s trade for Humberto Sanchez and Kevin Whelan. Obviously Sheff’s a lot older than Lowell was but trades for pitching prospects are always fraught with potential for danger.

Where does giving up Jake Westbrook, a guy who could have kept them from Pavano and Kevin Brown among others, for David Justice rank in your mind? Obviously Justice played a huge role in 2000 but he wasn’t worth much in 2001 and really didn’t do much in the playoffs that year.

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 01 May 2007 21:25:06 +0000

In my mind itâ€™s nowhere near the Vazquez/Johnson or Weaver/Brown debacles.

Javy Vazquez has been a marginally functional Big League pitcher since leaving the Yanks, just like Randy was in New York. Also, there is no way that Javy was coming back to the Bronx after the 2004 ALCS.

As for the Brown/Weaver “debacle,” that too was a wash. The Yanks traded a pitcher who can’t even keep his job in the Seattle rotation for someone who was a washed-up cry baby. Wow, I don’t miss Kevin Brown at all.

By: Joseph P.

Joseph P. — Tue, 01 May 2007 20:49:33 +0000

Really? I don’t see either of those deals as debacles. Crap for crap on both ends.

By: mehmattski

mehmattski — Tue, 01 May 2007 19:44:52 +0000

It’s worth noting that Yarnall was actually a fairly hyped pitching prospect for the Mets. He was traded to the Marlins in 1998 in the package that landed the Mets Mike Piazza. At the time of that trade, the 22 year old Yarnall had given up just two earned runs in 46.2 innings in AA, while striking out 52. I’m pretty sure it was that performance that the Yankees were remembering when they traded for Yarnall, and not the subpar showing he had at AAA later in 1998.

Lowell, meanwhile, was 24 and coming off a season in which he hit .304/.355/.535 at AAA. It probably wasn’t the best idea to trade a young promising third baseman when the light-hitting hot corner man (Brosius) was entering his age 32 season and not getting any younger (or light-hitting). I can see the justification for the trade, since the Yankees thought they would be getting next Andy Pettitte. But in the end it’s a pretty bad deal among minor league prospects, and that kind of thing happens all the time. Prospects bust. It happens.

In my mind it’s nowhere near the Vazquez/Johnson or Weaver/Brown debacles.