Philadelphia Phillies: The 10 worst trades in franchise history

Phillies Trade Cliff Lee to the Mariners

The Phillies were the beneficiaries of a very favorable trade that landed Cliff Lee in the first place, but unfortunately they were on the wrong end of the return when they decided to move him back in 2010. Philadelphia sent Lee to the Seattle Mariners for Philippe Aumont, JC Ramirez, and Tyson Gilles.

When you are trading away one of the better pitchers in the entire league, you would prefer to look back and remember the contributions of those they got for him. Well, you can’t in this case. This trade should honestly probably rank higher except that Lee hit free agency after the 2010 season, he came right back to Philly and played for four more seasons.

Phillies Trade for Freddy Garcia

This is a weird one and also a lesson that trades for pitchers have a much higher risk for being duds. Back in 2007, the Phillies were looking to solidify their rotation with a high impact arm and Freddy Garcia had a lengthy track record with the Mariners and White Sox of eating tons of innings and pitching well. So, the Phillies sent Gavin Floyd and Gio Gonzalez to Chicago to nab Garcia.

In hindsight, Philadelphia probably should have noticed that all of those innings had put a lot of mileage on Freddy’s arm and shoulder troubles ultimately cut his time with the Phillies short. He did manage to play in the big leagues for six more seasons with various different teams. Philadelphia would have been better off just keeping Gio Gonzalez who would go on to have a 13 year career in the big leagues including a stretch from 2010-2017 where he was one of the more consistent pitchers in baseball and where he posted a 3.41 ERA primarily with the Nationals.