Sixteen years ago today, the Blue Jays traded Robinzon Diaz to the Pirates for Jose Bautista. It was such a big deal that we here at Bluebird Banter didn’t even do a post on the trade. We did talk about it later, but the day of the trade went by without a mention of the deal. It turned out to be the best trade of J.P. Ricciardi’s career.
The news did get into a post I did a couple of days later:
Robinzon Diaz has been sent to Pittsburgh to complete the Bautista deal, so I guess we can take his name off our top 11 prospect list. I’m not sure what I think of that. Diaz didn’t have the best of years and likely saw J.P. Arencibia pass him by. But I thought he was closer to being Major League ready. We’ll need someone next season to catch, or we’ll have a heck of a lot of passed balls.
I missed that one.
A day later, I put up a poll on the trade. 48% thought it was a good trade for us, and 52% didn’t. Noticeably, I thought he was a middle infielder type at the time.
A few days later, I linked to a FanGraphs story, “Pirates Plunder Toronto” and said this:
Another story I thought I’d pass on is from Fangraphs: Pirates Plunder Toronto. Now, I don’t really like the trade, but to say the Jays got ‘plundered’ is overstating things a lot. I like Diaz, but I don’t think he’ll become a great major-league player. I think in the long run, it will end up being a nothing-for-nothing trade. But we’ll see.
Wrong again.
It took him a few days to get his first hit as a Blue Jay.
It took a year or so before we realized he should be more than a platoon player.
Anyway, it was a good trade for the Jays. Baseball Reference credits Jose with a WAR of 37.0 in his Blue Jays career. Diaz played 44 games in the majors.
Jose was one of my favourite players to watch. He’s intense, really wants to win, and seemed great with his teammates. Jose spent a lot of time giving tips and help to his teammates. Sometimes, I wish he’d have a little more fun, but the same ones who think he’s too intense would complain as much if he was smiling and happy.
He had more than his share of people complaining about him. That’s just part of the price for being the best player on a team that tends to disappoint. For some reason, people blame losing on the best players. When I was a kid, I watched people blame Gary Carter for the Expos coming up short. I always wondered why people don’t blame the crappy players.
I think that getting Jose was a turning point in the franchise. We went from a team with no personality to a team with some swagger. And we had a player that fans of other teams hated. As Reggie Jackson said, ‘People don’t boo nobodies.’
I can’t imagine (and don’t want to) what those seasons would have been like if we hadn’t traded for Jose. I’m sure they wouldn’t have been as enjoyable.
Favorite memories?
- The bat flip was such a Jose moment. We needed a big hit, and Jose got it for us. And I think his reaction spoke for all of us.
- I was at games in Boston in 2010 when he hit the season’s 48th and 49th home runs.
- In 2009, we were at the Jays games in Seattle. It was Jose’s first full season with the Jays. We were sitting on the third base side, low down. The Mariners had a runner on second, and a single was hit to left field (Jose played more games in left than right that year), so I figured we gave up a run. I was watching the runner, and I saw the throw from Jose come in on a line about 10 feet in the air, and he got the runner (Kenji Johjima) at the plate. Before that, I didn’t realize how good his arm was. Roy Halladay started that game, and we thought that it would be his last start as a Blue Jay, as the trade deadline was just two days away. As it turned out, he wasn’t traded until after the season.
- Watching him work with Chris Colabello on his defense in the outfield.
- Jose quietly refused to do interviews with Sportsnet because they did a feature on Devon Travis where they took him suit shopping and then had Travis pay for the suit. Jose thought it was unfair to basically do an ad for a men’s wear shop and then have a rookie, making the major league minimum (even though that’s a decent amount of money), pay for the purchase that was forced on him.
- Mostly, I remember how intense he was.
Jose on the Blue Jays career leaderboards:
Career bWAR position players: 1st (38,3).
Offensive bWAR: 2nd (37.0).
On base percentage: 7th (.372) minimum 1500 PA (tied with Otto Velez).
Slugging average: 5th (.506 behind Carlos Delgado (.556)).
OPS: 4th (.875, tied with Edwin Encarnacion).
Game Played: 5th (1235).
Home runs: 2nd (288, 48 short of Delgado).
RBI: 3rd (766).
Walks: 2nd (803, 24 behind Delgado).