Did the Brewers almost land a superstar pitcher during one trading deadline more than a decade ago? An ESPN story has a fun nugget to ponder.
The Major League Baseball trade deadline is less than a month away, and ESPN's Jesse Rogers penned a story asking general managers and other team personnel about their wild and crazy trade stories.
One particularly interesting item came from San Francisco Giants general manager Zack Minasian, who spent 14 years working for the Milwaukee Brewers. Minasian said during one season under general manager Doug Melvin, the Brewers believed they were getting star pitcher Félix Hernández from Seattle, a team then led by GM Jack Zduriencik, former Brewers scouting director.
"At one point, we thought Jack had agreed to it but he needed to make one other move before we could finalize it," Minasian said. "It didn't happen, but for an hour, we thought we were getting Félix Hernández. We were nervous, anxious, excited and just waiting."
The story doesn't indicate which year it nearly happened.
Hernández played 15 years in the big leagues with Seattle and made six all-star teams, the last of which was 2015 — Melvin and Zduriencik's last year as general manager with the Brewers and Mariners, respectively. Zduriencik took over the Mariners in 2008, and acquiring Hernández at any point between 2008 and 2015 would have been a major boon for the Brewers.
Hernández won the 2010 Cy Young Award and received votes for the award every year from 2012 through 2015, including a runner-up finish in 2014 when he led the league in ERA, starts and WHIP.
Could the Brewers have been looking to obtain King Félix in 2011 for a playoff push, marking another acquisition of a reigning Cy Young recipient after the famed CC Sabathia acquisition in 2008?
The Mariners were in last place in the AL West at the trade deadline, but Hernández was only in the second year of a five-year, $78 million deal at the time. Still, the Brewers were deadline sellers most of the other years in the window when Hernández would have theoretically been available.
Could it have been 2014, when Hernández was in the midst of his best season, and the Brewers were in first place at the trade deadline?
The Brewers rotation had four starters with sub-4 ERAs (Wily Peralta, Kyle Lohse, Yovani Gallardo and Matt Garza) that year, but Hernández would have immediately become the team's best starter. Seattle had a winning record at the deadline but was three games behind in the wild card at a time when only two wild-card teams made it from each league. Hernández was in the second year of a much bulkier contract at the time — seven years and $175 million.
Hernández fulfilled that contract with Seattle and hasn't pitched in the big leagues since. Over those years, he posted 10.9 WAR, according to Baseball Reference, with a 3.87 ERA and 1.212 WHIP in 149 starts.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: ESPN story says Brewers nearly got pitcher Félix Hernández decade ago
Category: Baseball
