Colorado Rockies: A trade tree that spans the entire franchise history

The Colorado Rockies have a trade tree that spans all the way from the 1993 Amateur Draft to a pitcher who mainly spent 2019 in Short-Season A Boise.

The Colorado Rockies have not been a franchise that has been known for their trades recently but under general manager “Dealin’ Dan O’Dowd,” the Rockies made their fair share of trades. Some of them worked out and some did not. With the trades, they do not have a ton of trade trees but there is one that spans the entire history of the franchise.

How it all started

In the first amateur draft after starting play, the Rockies had the 28th overall pick in the 1993 Amateur Draft. They drafted pitcher Jamey Wright out of high school with that pick. That pick started the longest trade tree in franchise history as well as one of many connections to the state of Oklahoma.

Wright, who was drafted out of high school in Oklahoma City, is one of many future Rockies from the state, including Jon Gray, Matt Holliday, Cory Sullivan, outfielder and current assistant hitting coach Jeff Salazar. The Rockies Double-A team was also in Tulsa from 2003 through 2014.

Wright made it to the major leagues with the Rockies in 1996 and spent most of the next four seasons at the major league level with the Rockies. He later resigned with the Rockies in 2004 but to end his first tenure with the Rockies, Dan O’Dowd traded Wright to the Milwaukee Brewers along with Henry Blanco in a three-way trade in December of 1999.

The Rockies acquired third baseman Jeff Cirillo and left-handed pitcher Scott Karl in return. Cirillo was acquired to replace Vinny Castilla, who was traded to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays that same day. Those two trades were the last two trades of the century and Millennium but only the fifth and sixth trades of a total of eight before games were to be played in 2000. A busy first offseason as GM for Dealin’ Dan, indeed.

The connectors

Cirillo played for the Rockies for the next two seasons and played well enough that we ranked him as the third-best third baseman in Rockies history. After the 2001 season, he was traded to the Seattle Mariners. Here’s what the trade looked like.

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Stark and Paniagua never panned out for the Rockies but Fuentes pitched for the Rockies out of the bullpen for the next seven seasons. He was an All-Star in three of those seasons and he pitched to a 3.38 ERA (144 ERA+) in 428 games out of the bullpen.

He left to join the Los Angeles Angels bullpen via free agency. The Rockies, however, got a compensation draft pick for the loss of Fuentes. That pick was the 33rd overall pick of the 2009 Amateur Draft. The Rockies happened to draft Rex Brothers with that pick.

Just a couple of days shy of two years after being drafted, Brothers made his MLB debut. Starting in 2011, he spent five seasons with the Rockies. He pitched to a 3.42 ERA (132 ERA+) in 286 games out of the bullpen for the Rockies. After the 2015 season, the Rockies traded Brothers to the Chicago Cubs for a pitcher that had just turned 18 years old at the time and had just finished his first professional season by the name of Wander Cabrera.

Cabrera, now 22, spent the 2019 season split between Short-Season A Boise and Single-A Asheville. He pitched to a 4.11 ERA in 50 1/3 innings (20 games, 4 starts) between the two.

Cabrera was more than four years away from being born before this trade tree even started. With only being 22, Cabrera still has some time to develop into an MLB pitcher so, perhaps, the trade tree can bear at least one more MLB player in the future.