The Frank Viola Trade 7/31/1989
I had fun chasing down the Knobby trade, so today I decided to check out the Frankie V trade from 1989.
Phase 1- The Twins traded Frank Viola for Rick Aguilera, David West, Kevin Tapani, Tim Drummond and Jack Savage. Savage pitched in 17 games and racked up a 8.31 era, he lasted 1 season. Drummond pitched for 3 forgettable years. David West pitched for 4 years before being traded to the Phillies. Tapani was the second jewel of the trade. He pitched for the Twins for 6 years, hitting double digit wins 5 times and finished with a winning season 4 times. He was traded in 95 to the Dodgers. Do I need to mention what Aguilera did for the Twins? He was eventually traded twice. Tapani, West and Aguilera all won rings with the Twins in 91. However West was not much of a contributor. His stats for the 91 Ws were 0 innings pitched, an infinite ERA, 4 walks, 2 hits, 1 Hr and 4 runs.
Phase 2 West was traded in 92 to the Phillies for Mike Hartley. Tapani was traded 6 years to the day to the LA Dodgers with Mark Guthrie for Ron Coomer, Greg Hansell, Jose Parra, Chris Latham. Coomer was the only one who contributed anything.
Rick Aguilera Phase 1- Traded to the Red Sox for Frankie Rodriguez 7/95. Signed back on as a free agent 12/95.
Rick Aguilera Phase 2- Traded to the Cubs with Scott Downs for Kyle Lohse and Jay Ryan.
RA Phase 3- Lohse was traded to the Reds for Zach Ward. According to Baseball America Ward compiled a 5-17 record with only a 4.08 era. The FM Miracles scored 22 runs in his 15 games.
Acquiring Tapani and Aguilera helped the Twins win the 91 WS however, the subsequent trades could not be parlayed into yielding more stars and could be argued help the Twins slip to the bottom of the league for the next 10 years. While the Twins were still the clear cut winners in the deal, I still rank it behind the Knobby deal.
Quick trivia question who was traded for Tom Brunansky and who was he later traded for? The answers are in the replies.
6 Comments:
Doug Corbett and Rob Wilfong were traded for Bruno. He was traded to the Cardinals for Tom Herr.
May 30, 2008 at 11:50 AM
rts- love the post-trade recaps, keep them coming.
The mention of Tommy Herr got me thinking about my favorite Twin's sceond baseman, and I found this little interesting tidbit:
Lombardozzi led all hitters in the 1987 World Series with a .412 batting average. He also held the record for the longest last name of any player to hit a postseason home run, until it was broken by Doug Mientkiewicz of the Minnesota Twins in 2002.
May 30, 2008 at 1:41 PM
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May 30, 2008 at 3:15 PM
Lombardozzi was traded for Ramon Cedeno and Gordon Farmer. I had to dig on that one.
I (and baseball almanac) missed someone in the Milton for Silva and Punto deal, teh popular Bobby Korecky. It was a slow one here.
May 30, 2008 at 3:23 PM
Tommy Herr, memories! When I played 8th grade baseball at the first practice I didn't have my batting gloves and was subsequently called Tommy Herr for a day or two.
Quickly on Aggie - in my humble opinion Nathan is already the most dominate closer in Twins history. However, here are some numbers from Aggies days his days with the Twinkies that bring back how huge he was to the organization:
11 seasons (or parts thereof)
254 saves (1990 - 1993 he had 32, 42, 41, and 34 respectively);
Average ERA over those 11 seasons was 3.19 (1990 - 1993 he went 2.76, 2.35, 2.83, 3.11).
However he was stone cold in the post season. In 1991 against Toronto he pitched 3.1 inings, had 3 saves and an 0.00 ERA. In the World Series he had a 1.80 ERA going 5 innings.
May 30, 2008 at 3:54 PM
Guys, this is phenomenal stuff. "Hey Bruno...how 'bout a little BINGOOOO?!?!" Remember that commercial? Good times.
Aggie was money...as was Reardon, if I remember right. Unfortunately, I seem to recall we traded him to Boston shortly after the 87 world series.
Where does Every Day Eddie rank with our all-time closers? Kidding...the fact that he forced Jan Stenerud into his closet (literally, not with respect to sexual preference) on multiple occasions means he can't be top 10.
June 2, 2008 at 1:11 PM
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