A's History: The Matt Holliday Trade

Jason Burke | 2 Hours Ago

A's Daily Walkoff 12/2 / Daily Walkoff

Ahead of the 2009 season, the Oakland Athletics made a big swing, acquiring one of the best hitters in baseball in Matt Holliday from the Colorado Rockies. A's fans have seen this deal as a huge flop and rank this deal up there with some of the worst of the Billy Beane era.

That's especially true because of the cost it took to acquire him. While some may be up in arms about losing Greg Smith, the main two pieces of the deal were closer Huston Street and a young outfielder by the name of Carlos González. With the Rockies, he would turn into the man they called "Car-Go," being named to three All Star teams, winning three Gold Gloves, two Silver Sluggers, and one batting title.

Funnily enough, González came to the A's with Smith in a big trade that sent Dan Haren to the Arizona Diamondbacks, and also brought along Chris Carter and Brett Anderson among others.

In retrospect, the trade with the Rockies was a huge price to pay for what ended up being a few months of Matt Holliday. Most fans remember him not playing terribly well, but his OPS+ was still at a 120 (100 is league average) while hitting .278 with a .378 OBP. He also added 11 home runs and 12 stolen bases in 93 games before getting dealt to St. Louis.

All of this brings us to today's Daily Walkoff, which you can play here.

A's Daily Walkoff 12/2 / Daily Walkoff

The board above is the scrambled up version, not the finished one.

One of the names on that board stuck out today, and that was Johny Damon, who came over from the Kansas City Royals in a time period when the A's were snagging big-time outfielders from the Royals. First it was Damon back in January of 2001, followed by Jermaine Dye in July of the same year. According to Baseball-Reference, Dye was technically traded to the Rockies first, then flipped to Oakland on the same day.

Damon was with the A's for the 2001 season, his only year with the club before reaching free agency. In that lone year he hit .256 with a .363 OBP and put up an 83 OPS+, his lowest in four seasons. In other words, Damon's production was a lot worse for the A's in his time with the team that Holliday's.

The reason that fans view the two trades differently is because of the packages it took to land each of them. Holliday's deal resulted in a haul for Colorado, yet the Damon package, even though he didn't necessarily produce as hoped, also brought Mark Ellis to Oakland, along with Cory Lidle. Both were solid for the A's, especially Ellis, who is arguably the most underrated player in Oakland history.

It's also worth noting that the feeling with Holliday and the A's fans is in some ways mutual, with the outfielder putting a clause in his contract with the New York Yankees that he could be traded to any team--except Oakland. When he visited the Coliseum in 2017, NJ.com did a piece on his time with the A's, and he was actually fairly complimentary of Oakland and the coaches, he just said that going to work everyday at the Coliseum was rough for him.

"I think if they had a nice facility this would be a good place to play," he said. "There were a lot of things that I liked about my time in Oakland. I liked Billy Beane a lot and I liked the coaching staff, which I thought was really good. I lived in Danville ... the East Bay. It was beautiful. We rented a nice place there. Again, outside of the stadium ..."

With that, here are the answers to today's Daily Walkoff:

Daily Walkoff 12/2 Answers / Daily Walkoff