Atlanta Braves: Revisiting the trade that sent Adam Wainwright to St. Louis
With Atlanta Braves baseball on hiatus, we reflect back on a very famous trade involving a couple of big baseball names between the Braves and the Cardinals.
What a wonderful time to revisit famous trades. Today we travel back in time to December of 2003. The Atlanta Braves were gearing up for a run at 13-consecutive division titles.
However, the end of the 2003 season marked the end of both Gary Sheffield‘s and Javy Lopez‘s time in a Braves uniform.
Sheffield was coming off of an incredible season in which he hit 39 homers, drove in 132 runs, stole 18 bags, and slashed .330/.419/.604. I’d also like to add that he only struck out 55 times in 2003. That’s a lot of offense to replace.
To make matters worse, longtime catcher Javy Lopez had finished fifth in MVP voting and crushed 43 bombs from the catcher position. He was set to take his talents to Baltimore as the Braves slashed payroll under the ownership of Time Warner Inc.
Sure-Handed Schuerholz
John Schuerholz led the Braves out of the dumps and to 14 straight division titles. He took the helm as general manager in 1991, which is the season that saw the Braves famously go from worst to first, and never looked back.
The offseason of 2003 presented him with quite a challenge. Were the Braves still going to contend in 2004 after losing all of that offensive firepower and slashing payroll?
After assessing the landscape, it became apparent that the Cardinals’ GM Walt Jocketty was shopping a former first-round draft pick, J.D. Drew.
The slugger only had one year remaining on his contract and had struggled with a slew of injuries. During his first six seasons in St. Louis, he never played more than 135 games in one year.
Schuerholz had his staff look into Drew’s medical records and they determined that he didn’t have any chronic issues. The negotiations began.
Jocketty-ing for Position
Walt Jocketty and the Cardinals had their sights set on the Braves’ top pitching prospect. The Braves tried to hang on to Adam Wainwright in the negotiations but it became clear that one-year of J.D. Drew’s bat would cost them the career of Adam Wainwright.
You just never know how a minor-league standout will transition to the majors. Wainwright was ranked as high as the 18th best prospect in the game prior to the 2003 season by Baseball America. Prior to the 2004 campaign, he was ranked 49th and had spent three consecutive years inside the top 50.
With other teams inquiring about the services of the thunderous bat of J.D. Drew, Atlanta was forced to include the big right-handed pitcher in the deal.
On December 13, 2003, the Atlanta Braves traded SP Jason Marquis, RP Ray King, and minor leaguer Adam Wainwright to the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for OF/C Eli Marrero and OF J.D. Drew.
The deal was complete.
Jason Marquis and Adam Wainwright accounted for the Braves’ top picks in the 1996 and 2000 drafts. Marquis had been serviceable in his four seasons with the Braves, pitching to a 4.45 ERA. He would go on to put up the best season of his career with the Cardinals in 2004 as he crossed 200 innings for the first time and finished with a 3.71 ERA and won 15 games for the Redbirds.
Meanwhile, the Braves were simply trying to fill the holes on their roster following the 2003 season. The biggest hole was on offense. Javy Lopez was gone and replacing that kind of offensive production from the catcher position was next to impossible. The Braves planned on going with Johnny Estrada and Eddie Perez behind the plate.
The pitching staff still looked pretty solid on paper as they opened the season with Russ Ortiz, Mike Hampton, John Thompson, Horacio Ramirez, and Jaret Wright.
Atlanta also boasted one of the best closers in the game. John Smoltz was coming off of a truly spectacular 2003 season in which he saved 45 games and humiliated opposing hitters by allowing only eight earned runs the entire season.
The trade was a potential sacrifice of a future asset to fill the need for an outfield bat right now. Did it pay off?
The Pay Off
We all know how things turned out for Wainwright in St. Louis. In fact, things are still turning out for the veteran right now. Over 14 major-league seasons, he has registered a career ERA of 3.39 with four top-three finishes in Cy Young voting.
On the flipside, Walt Jocketty’s fears would soon become a reality.
“Our biggest concern is that he could have his breakout year,” Cardinals general manager Walt Jocketty said. “It’s something we agonized about.”
Adding Drew to an already star-studded team which included Chipper Jones, Andruw Jones, Rafael Furcal, Marcus Giles, and Adam LaRoche, really reduced the impact of losing both Sheffield and Javy Lopez.
Did the sacrifice pay off for the Braves? I suppose that depends on who you ask. There’s no doubt that the plan worked. The plan was to trade a prospect of the future for production right now. J.D. Drew stayed healthy and produced what would be the best season of his entire career.
In his book, Built to Win, Schuerholz said he called this before the season.
“I predicted to our staff we would have him for only the one year remaining on his contract. He is represented by Scott Boras, who pushes his clients into free agency when at all possible and, if J.D. had the kind of productive season I fully expected, would demand far more than our budget would accommodate.”
He would go on to say that the Braves did offer Drew the most they could muster, which was three years and $25 million.
“Boras laughed at it.”
Drew ended up slashing .305/.436/.569 with 28 doubles, eight triples, 31 homers while driving in 93 runs and scoring 118 runs and walking 118 times.
The Braves ended up winning 96 games en route to their 13th consecutive NL East title.
The cherry on top of the deal was Eli Marrero’s performance. At the time of the deal, Braves’ manager Bobby Cox expressed his enthusiasm in also acquiring Marrero as a part of the deal.
“He’s capable of stealing 30 bases,” Cox said. “I think he’ll see a lot of playing time. He’s not just a throw-in, we want him.”
Marrero played in 90 games for the Braves in 2004, slashing .305/.374/.520 and clubbing 10 homers. He ended up playing an important role for the division champions.
I think it’s fair to say that this trade worked out for both parties. The Cardinals moved their oft-injured outfielder with one year remaining on his deal for an ace that would become one of the faces of their franchise.
Next. Ronald Acuna vs. the NL East. dark
The Braves moved a top prospect in an effort to win now and win now they did. The Braves 2004 season ended when they lost in the NLDS to the Houston Astros.