Originally posted on MLB Trade Rumors | By Tim Dierkes | Last updated 2/16/21
Less than three months after their first-round playoff defeat to the Marlins, the Cubs traded second place NL Cy Young finisher Yu Darvish to the Padres. This occurred after the Cubs won their division with a .567 winning percentage, which would have extrapolated to about 92 wins in a full season. I looked back through the last 20 years, and this has never been done: winning teams simply do not trade top-two Cy Young finishers.
As you might expect, teams prefer not to trade top-two Cy Young finishers at all. In the past 20 years, it’s only been done twice in the offseason: the Mets traded 38-year-old R.A. Dickey to the Blue Jays after the 2012 season, and the Diamondbacks dealt 41-year-old Randy Johnson to the Yankees after Arizona’s abysmal 2004 campaign. Let’s see if the more recent Dickey trade bears any similarities to what the Cubs did.
Happy Birthday Mookie Wilson and Dioner Navarro
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Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images
Mookie Wilson turns 65 today. Until recently, he was the best Mookie ever to play in the MLB.
Mookie played center field for the
Mets for years. His most famous moment was in game 6 of the 1986 World Series against the
Red Sox. Bottom of the 10th inning, the Red Sox had scored 2 in the top of the inning to take the lead and get to where they were just three outs from winning their first World Series since 1918. The Mets made two quick outs, then