I think this merits a separate discussion, because it's an interesting topic that should illustrate how far the thinking of GMs has come in seven years.
In the Gord Ash trade catalogue thread, dp said that he thought the Garcia/Merced/Plesac for prospects deal was "just bad luck" in the way it didn't turn out. I'm not picking on dp, who typically gives great insight, but I have to disagree with him here -- I don't think the Jays got very much, and they should have known it at the time. Let me explain why.
First, let's recap the trade from Leigh Sprague's terrific catalogue.
Toronto trades P Jose Silva, SS/2B Abraham Nunez and 1B/OF Craig Wilson to Pittsburgh for 2B Carlos Garcia, OF Orlando Merced and RP Dan Plesac. [We should remember that Toronto also sent minor leaguer Mike Haperin to Pittsburgh as a PTBNL, but that's pretty irrelevant.]
How to analyze the trade? I like trying to imagine the deal going down today, and finding equivalents to those Pittsburgh players to see what sort of deal this was.
Think of it this way. Garcia, going into his age-29 season, was pretty much equivalent to Marlon Anderson now (Anderson's OPS+ were 97, 90, 86 in the last three years... Garcia's prior to the trade were 75, 98, 89). Garcia had high batting averages, so everyone thought he was better than he was, but he wasn't very good defensively (how bad? Jim Leyland, who knows something about baseball, was using Jeff King as a part-time second baseman in '96, and Nelson Liriano in '95) and defensively was going into the tank early as second basemen do. Garcia and Anderson are very close comps in my mind.
Merced, a perfectly good defensive rightfielder, was coming off years of OPS+ of 96, 117, and 111. His best current comp is Matt Lawton, Jacque Jones or Bubba Trammell. I'll go with Jones, who is closer in age (28) to Merced (29) than Lawton (31)... despite Jones being a LF, he's a very good one defensively.
Plesac was a good consistent lefty reliever, a tiny bit above average (ERA+ of 91, 122, and 107). His best current comp is Mike Matthews, or maybe Felix Heredia, though both are much younger than Plesac was. Matthews is closest.
Garcia was scheduled to make $2.55 million dollars in '97, the equivalent of $4.25 million today (multiply the 1997 figures by 1.7, since the average team salary was $40 million and is about $68 million now). Garcia was in his walk year.
Merced was scheduled to make $2.7 million dollars in '97, the equivalent of $4.6 million today. Merced was also in his walk year.
Plesac was due to make $800,000 in '97, the equivalent of $1.4 million today. I don't know about the terms of his deal, but it may have been a 2-year deal, and I'll assume that.
So in 2004 terms the Jays got:
* Marlon Anderson in the last year of a contract paying him $4.25 million
* Jacque Jones in the last year of a contract paying him $4.6 million
* Mike Matthews in the first year of a two-year contract paying him $1.4 million a year
For that, they gave up Jose Silva, Craig Wilson, Abraham Nunez, and Mike Halperin... the first three of whom were considered very good prospects. I don't think that's a good deal. It's not a deal that a 74-88 team would make today. But that's not the end of the consideration.
At the time, the 74-88 Jays had just finished a season with 22-year-old Tomas Perez at second base and 23-year-old Shawn Green in right field. Both players had had some struggles in '96, but both were young and showed lots of potential. Even the year before at 22, Green had done more than what Merced had done in Pittsburgh.
The response from the 74-88 Jays was to pull Perez and Green from the lineup, sit them on the bench, and trade for these high-priced, middling veterans to take their place. A very different response from what the team would do nowadays. From what any team would do nowadays.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20040130100800999