Chris Jaffe over at The Hardball Times posted an article yesterday on the 30th anniversary of the Ryne Sandberg trade.
And one more thing: DeJesus was several years younger than Bowa. To be precise, he was seven years and one month younger. Thus even though Bowa had the reputation and the name value and the Gold Gloves, in order to pull off the shortstop swap the Phillies had to throw in a second player.
And that’s where the deal became a disaster for Philadelphia.
On the face of it, the Phils sent the player they could most afford to lose. They sent Chicago a young prospect who played third base. Folks, it’s January 1982 and the Phillies are pretty well settled at third base, thank you very much. They had a guy named Mike Schmidt and he’d just won his second consecutive NL MVP Award.
I can’t help but think that this type of trade is less likely to happen today. Sandberg, by today’s standards, doesn’t profile as a 3rd baseman so he’d be moved to 2nd base. Jaffe points out that many lopsided trades are going to be logical trades at the time they were made and this one was from the Phillies perspective.