Thankfully, Braves' fans don't have to hear people bring this trade up this season, as Adam Wainwright is on the shelf for the season with Tommy John surgery. The former Braves' first rounder has been one of the best pitchers in baseball since in the 2 seasons leading up to this one, piling up a whopping 463 innings while posting 11.8 WAR in those two seasons combined. He has struck out over 8 per nine innings, posted ground ball rates over 50%, and had K/BB ratios of at least 3.25 to 1 in each of those 3 seasons. In addition, he was also the closer on a World Series winner in 2006. Wainwright is a fantastic pitcher, and I wish he still pitched for the Braves.
However, I still get frustrated when people talk about how fleeced the Braves got in this deal, because it isn't entirely true. I'm sure we all remember that the Braves got J.D. Drew and Eli Marrero from the Cardinals in that deal, and people hate the fact that Drew only played one season for the Braves. Why send away a potentially great pitcher to get a one year rental?
First off, we have to look at Wainwright's standing as a prospect at the time had dipped a bit at the time, and the Braves' system still had plenty of good pitching prospects in it (as it typically does). The Braves still had high hopes for guys such as Horacio Ramirez, Jose Capellan, Macay McBride, Anthony Lerew, Dan Meyer, and Kyle Davies. Unfortunately, none of those guys except Ramirez really made any contributions to the Braves, other than Meyer being a key part of the package that sent Tim Hudson to Atlanta. However, I think it is hard to blame John Schuerholz for dealing one of his good young pitchers when he had quite a few highly regarded arms behind Wainwright. The team was trying to win now, and Wainwright was the guy who good bring in a much needed bat to get the Braves back to playoffs. It is the way baseball goes, and I think it is likely that the Braves' current stable of young arms will be broken up a bit to provide the current big league club with some more offensive punch. Sometimes you have to deal those prospects (especially pitching prospects as they are so hit and miss. Did you see those names I listed above? My point exactly), and when you have plenty of others who you think will fill the void, you take the gamble.
The second part of this equation, and the most important part, is that the Braves hit a HOME FREAKING RUN on this deal in the 2004 season. J.D. Drew may have only played one season with the Braves, but they got about 2 seasons of production out of him, as Drew posted a stunning .305/.436/.569 slash line in 145 games played, while also managing to be 16.3 runs above average defensively in right field for that Braves team (quick tangent, but that Braves outfield was the best defensive outfield I've ever seen, and the numbers back me up on this. Drew was 16.3 runs above average, Andruw Jones was a ho hum 18.4 runs above average in center, and Charles Thomas was 9.5 runs above average in left. And people wondered how the Braves got production from a bunch of journeyman pitchers that year). According to FanGraphs WAR, J.D. Drew was the 5th best player in all of baseball that year, behind Barry Bonds, Randy Johnson, Adrian Beltre (his absurd 48 homer season), and Scott Rolen (Take a look at his player page on any baseball reference website and be prepared to be wowed. He was a terrific ball player in his prime). In fact, Drew was so good that he is the only player in the Chipper Jones era that has dislodged Chipper from his beloved 3 hole. Yes, he was that good.
The other forgotten factor of this deal was just how absurdly good Eli Marrero was in his one season with the Braves. He only got 280 plate appearances in his platoon role with Charles Thomas, but Marrero produced by far and away the best season of his career at the dish, hitting .320/.374/.520 for a ridiculous .382 wOBA from a really average hitter. His production was good enough for 1.8 WAR. Combine that with Drew's 8.9, and that is 10.7 WAR of production in one season from the two players the Braves got in that deal. That is a jaw dropping one season return on investment.
It sucks that the Braves had to lose such a great pitcher in Adam Wainwright in a trade, and in the end, the Cardinals have to be considered the winner because of the production that Wainwright has given the Cardinals already, in addition to his expected production once he comes back from injury. However, please save me the Braves got fleeced nonsense. It took Adam Wainwright and Jason Marquis until 2009 to match the total WAR that the Braves got out of J.D. Drew and Eli Marrero in one season. This was not nearly as bad a deal as many Braves think it was.
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