Philadelphia Phillies won 3 teams’ all-time worst trades
By Tim Boyle
The Philadelphia Phillies are far from perfect when it comes to trades. If the name Ivan de Jesus doesn’t scare you, ask someone a little bit older.
Over at the dot com, I wrote up an article on the worst trades every MLB team has ever made. It was an interesting experiment. Some teams I knew about without doing any research. Others, while the trade was bad, didn’t make a deal that ruined their franchise entirely.
One thing I did notice was how many Phillies trades were a part of this exploration. The Phillies were fortunate enough to be on the winning side of three trades I deemed to be the worst a franchise has made. Twice it brought them a Hall of Fame pitcher. The other time, an outfielder with a pedigree for getting to Cooperstown as well. Any guesses?
The Philadelphia Phillies won the worst Cardinals trade when they picked up one of the best southpaws in the game’s history, Steve Carlton.
The worst trade in St. Louis Cardinals’ history is possibly the best the other way around. It’s hard to imagine Steve Carlton wearing any other uniform. Amazingly, he was with the Cardinals for parts of seven seasons before even joining the Phillies.
Coming off of a 20-9 season with a 3.56 ERA, Carlton was sent to Philadelphia in a straight-up one-for-one swap. Rick Wise was the pitcher headed to St. Louis.
Wise was actually a little younger than Lefty at the time of the deal and coming off of a successful year of his own. Wise was 17-14 with a 2.88 ERA during the 1971 season, his last with the Phillies. He’d spend two seasons with the Cardinals before getting shipped up to the Boston Red Sox. He was good in St. Louis, going 32-28 with a 3.24 ERA.
But that doesn’t compare to what Carlton accomplished in Philadelphia.
Carlton turned it up a notch in 1972, going 27-10 with a 1.97 ERA. He won his first Cy Young and was on track to helping the franchise turn things around. During his 15 years with the Phillies, Carlton would go 241-161 with a 3.09 ERA. This is the kind of performance you would expect an elite player to have over the course of an entire career. This was just what he did with the Phillies.
The Cardinals could have had one of baseball’s greatest southpaws of all-time. Instead, he ended up with our beloved Phillies.