When the Astros traded for Justin Verlander ahead of the 2017 August trade deadline, every baseball publication in the country wrote about the seismic impact that the once (and future) Cy Young winner might have on a Houston franchise that had World Series aspirations. Heck, that was such a big move that even traditional news organizations wrote on the deal.
But when the Astros traded for the hero of Game 1 of the ALDS? Basically, nothing.
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Eleven months before the mammoth deal for Verlander, Houston sent reliever Josh Fields — owner of a 6.89 ERA at the time — to Los Angeles. It was not, safe to say, a headline-grabbing move. Not for the major sports publications and certainly not for news organizations.
Heck, even the local team websites weren’t impressed. Here’s the lede to the story published on SB Nation’s Crawfish Boxes.
“In another pretty lackluster move at the trade deadine (sic), the Houston Astros announced they traded reliever Josh Fields to the Dodgers for Cuban outfielder Yordan Alvarez.”
There’s a paragraph break here, for effect.
“Oh, sorry. Alvarez is an infielder/outfielder. So, basically, just a player.”
Alvarez didn’t look like “just a player” when he smoked that fastball from Robbie Ray deep into the right-field stands at Minute Maid Field, did he? And the point here isn’t to poke fun at the blog, but to show how it’s sometimes the little moves that help build dynasties. And the Astros aren’t alone in finding these hidden gems.
Here’s one player from each the other seven remaining playoff teams who has made a major impact — not all like Alvarez, but significant — and how it happened.
Nestor Cortes, Yankees
Originally a 38th-round draft pick by the Yankees in 2013, Cortes was selected by the Orioles in the 2017 Rule 5 draft, then returned to New York that spring because the Orioles didn’t want to keep him on the big league roster. After the 2019 season, he was traded to Seattle for “future considerations” — that turned out to be international pool money — because the Yankees didn’t have a spot for him, after he posted a 5.67 ERA in 66 2/3 innings.
After his injury-shortened 2020 season, the Mariners cut him loose that October. A couple of months later, the Yankees brought him back into the fold, but on a minor league deal. He posted a 1.20 ERA in 15 innings in Triple-A that May, then was called up to the big leagues and he’s been fooling MLB hitters ever since.
Trayce Thompson, Dodgers
Here’s the Thompson timeline in the big leagues:
2015: White Sox, 44 games
2016: Dodgers, 80 games
2017: Dodgers, 27 games
2018, Team 1: A’s, 3 games
2018, Team 2: White Sox, 48 games
2019: None
2020: None
2021: Cubs, 15 games
2022, Team 1: Padres, 6 games
2022, Team 2: Dodgers, 74 games
Oh, and between his MLB and now, he also was with the Yankees, Indians, Diamondbacks and Tigers, but didn’t see any games in the majors with those organizations. So, yes, it’s a bit surprising — but very cool — that he hit 13 homers with a 145 OPS+ in 74 games with the Dodgers, in his Age 31 season. He was purchased from the Tigers on June 20 of this season and was in the game the next day.
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Jose Ramirez, Guardians
Long before Cleveland fans spent a lockout-stunted winter of angst worried that their favorite franchise player might soon be heading out of town, local scout Ramon Pena found a hidden gem in the smallish kid with a stocky build playing in the ballfields of the Dominican Republic. Pena liked what he saw, but few other scouts did, so the competition to sign the 17-year-old Ramirez was not exactly fierce.
A $50,000 bonus got the job done in November 2009, at a time — noted in this outstanding Cleveland.com piece — when $200,000 bonuses were the norm. Ramirez made his MLB debut in 2013 and his next two significant contracts were slightly north of $50,000 — five years, $26 million in 2017 and seven years, $141 million this spring. Ramirez will almost certainly earn his fifth career Top 6 AL MVP finish. Not a bad return on $50K, eh?
Jesse Chavez, Braves
Chavez is as well-traveled as any pitcher in the bigs. How long ago was his first stint — oh, this is his third time with the Braves — in Atlanta? He arrived in a trade for Rafael Soriano, and left in a deal that brought Rick Ankiel and Kyle Farnsworth to Atlanta.
In 2022, he started with the Cubs and was traded to Atlanta on April 21. He was traded to the Angels on Aug. 2, then released by the Angels 27 days later, after a 7.59 ERA in 11 appearances out of the bullpen. The Braves brought him home, and he had a 1.88 ERA — pitching some big innings — down the stretch before a hiccup in his final outing.
Robert Suarez, Padres
Suarez’s initial deal with the Padres was for so much more than anyone else on this list — two years, with a guarantee of $11 million — but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a player with a stranger path to the big leagues. For starters, he was 30 years old when he signed the deal with San Diego last December. He started his pro career in 2015 in Mexico — his Age 24 season — and spent 2016, along with 2018-21, in Japan. In 2021, the hard-throwing right-hander posted a 1.16 ERA with 42 saves for Hanshin, and the time was right to head to MLB. In 45 appearances with the Padres, Suarez had a 2.27 ERA, with 61 strikeouts in 47 2/3 innings.
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Andrew Bellatti, Phillies
Let’s put it this way: The Wikipedia page section about his baseball career talks about his MLB debut with Tampa Bay in 2015, but it includes this subhead: Sugar Land Skeeters (second stint). And that second stint was 2020, so it was cut short by the pandemic. He’s been DFA’d, released and outrighted. He signed a minor league deal with the Phillies last November, at 31 years old.
He quickly got called up to the bigs, though, and he’s been a reliable member of the Phillies bullpen — basically, a white whale the past decade or so — with a 3.31 ERA in 59 appearances. And he was the first Phillies reliever out of the bullpen as the club held the lead in Game 1 of the NLDS against the Braves.
Dylan Moore, Mariners
Once upon a time, back in 2016, Moore was traded from the Rangers to the Braves in a three-team deal that sent fan favorite Jeff Francoeur out of Atlanta. He was released by the Braves in the spring of 2018 and signed with the Brewers. Milwaukee parted ways after that season, and Moore signed with the Mariners.
The transaction was worth a Ken Rosenthal tweet, but a quick Google search shows that pretty much every story mentioning the signing was a link to the tweet and a paragraph or two of stats. Moore has been a play-everywhere guy for Seattle — starting at least 10 games in center, left and right field, in addition to second, third and shortstop — while contributing 35 homers and 65 stolen bases in 381 games since 2019.
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