Deadline deals can be a tough business

The trade deadline has come and gone — thank goodness — leaving in its wake Friday 37 deals, 20 former All-Stars among those switching teams and only two clubs that didn’t alter their 25-man roster.

Among the All-Stars dealt were Cole Hamels, Matt Harrison, Carlos Gomez, Ben Zobrist, Johnny Cueto, David Price and Troy Tulowitzki. The player who might have gotten the most attention wasn’t an All-Star and wasn’t even traded.

Poor Wilmer Flores was caught crying on the field after rumors swirled that the New York Mets were trading him to the Milwaukee Brewers for Gomez. But the Mets didn’t like Gomez’s medical file, and, voila, Flores wasn’t going anywhere.

The good news for Flores is that Mets fans wrapped their arms around him. He loves the Mets and New York, and the fans and city loved him back, even if his team didn’t exactly show him much love Wednesday night.

The only player who wanted to be traded was Jonathan Papelbon, and he had a list of demands that resulted in Drew Storen losing his job as Washington Nationals closer for no good reason.

Tulowitzki was shocked to be traded. So was Harrison, who has essentially missed the past 2 1/2 seasons because of back woes.

The lesson here, which these players didn’t need to be reminded of or taught, is that baseball is a business. Relationships go out the window when the right deal comes along, and it can be tough personally.

Take Harrison, for instance. He was traded to the Rangers as a minor leaguer, in the Mark Teixeira deadline trade in 2007, but at that time he wasn’t married, didn’t have two children, three dogs, a house in his baseball home and seven years of baseball memories.

He has all those things now, and he left them behind Friday as the Phillies summoned him to Philadelphia. Like Flores loves the Mets and New York, Harrison loves the Rangers and the Metroplex.

“I’m going to miss the people around there, the town, and especially my teammates,” Harrison said. “I’ve been with those guys a long time. A lot of good friendships there that I’m going to miss. We’ll stay in touch by phone, but I’m never going to play with those guys again. It’s crazy.”

While surprised that he was traded after three back operations since 2013, Harrison knows the business side.

“You just hope it doesn’t happen to you at the time,” he said. “You get comfortable with the players and where you are and the people around you. Maybe sometimes that can be a bad thing for a player to get too comfortable.”

Trading a veteran isn’t particularly easy on the front office, either, nor is it easy to trade a prospect that the club has invested so much of its time and resources into. The Rangers did both in getting Hamels, shipping Harrison and five prospects.

The top of the class, in the Phillies’ eyes, is Jorge Alfaro. The Rangers have had him since he was 16 and recognize that he has a chance to be a special player. Hamels, though, already is.

“Alfaro, from a straight tools and ability standpoint, is probably close to unrivaled in the minor leagues at least as far as what he can do if he puts it all together,” general manager Jon Daniels said.

In Harrison, the Rangers developed a fondness for what he’s done for the franchise and how he has persevered through his medical woes. Daniels broke from his normal business practice of waiting to tell players they had been traded until after the deal is official, fearful that Harrison would learn on Twitter that he was being traded.

But he was owed more than $30 million through 2017, and shedding his contract would help the Rangers squeeze Hamels into their budget.

“That’s hard because that’s the kind of business side, the cold side of the deal, so to speak,” Daniels said. “When you like somebody as much as we all felt with Matt, but that’s the reality of it.”

Harrison could blossom again in Philadelphia, where there will be no pressure to perform for a playoff contender and he continue to work on regaining his form of a few years ago.

First, though, he needs back stiffness to clear up. The Phillies put him on the disabled list Friday, a move he said the Rangers would have had to make had they not traded him.

He was also diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, which he hopes can explain his rapid weight loss since April and possibly his back stiffness and lack of velocity. With the lost pounds came a loss of mass in his core, and one theory is that his back will get stronger and the radar gun will light up brighter as he gets heavier.

“I don’t know if in Texas there was stuff that I needed to work on. It’s just my velocity wouldn’t go up,” Harrison said. “I don’t know if that’s a combination of things. I think it was just going to take time to get that back to where it was.

“I’ve been rehabbing a long time and may have gotten in a rehab mode. Maybe I needed something to get me going again. I don’t know.”

That’s his goal now after a stunning trade. But, hey, it’s business this time of year at the trade deadline.

“The first day I was still in shock with everything that had just happened,” Harrison said. “I didn’t expect to get traded with the issues I’ve had the last couple years. I guess I’m excited about a new beginning.”

This story was originally published August 1, 2015 at 7:27 PM with the headline "Deadline deals can be a tough business."