By Tim Britton, Andy McCullough, Rustin Dodd and Stephen J. Nesbitt When the trade deadline nears, The Athletic ’s reporters bring out their red pens and grade each team’s moves, assessing more than 30 trades last summer. Those, of course, are snap judgements — the reality is that the value of many of these trades won’t be clear for months or even years.
Still, most of the time, we feel pretty good about the grades we hand out, even knowing that it’s an imperfect exercise. Then there are those other ones, the grades that haunt; the occasions where we were a little too harsh or a little too lenient, or just didn’t get it right. Four of our trade graders looked back at deals they missed on at the 2023 deadline, and tried to determine exactly what went wrong.
Angels get: Lucas Giolito , RHP; Reynaldo López , RHP White Sox get: Edgar Quero , C; Ky Bush , LHP Angels: B White Sox: A- Tim Britton: Look, we all knew at the time that the Angels were giving up more than they should have given their competitive context: Even had Giolito and López pitched lights out over the final two months, they probably couldn’t have chased down the Rangers or Blue Jays in the American League for a playoff spot. Advertisement But every potential saving grace of the deal collapsed quickly. “If we are to be crushed, let us be crushed gloriously,” I quoted in my initial writeup, and Giolito obliged.
In six starts with the Angels, he lost five and reached the bare minimum of a qualit.