RealGM

-Marlins approached AA by telling him "do you want to make a trade that will guarantee you the playoffs"?
-AA's ears perked up
-Marlins approached the Jays with Reyes and Buerhle but this guy made it sound like they forced the Jays to take on Josh Johnson, Emilio Bonificao, and John Buck
-The framework was done; the requested Yunel, Hech, Alvarez, Marisnick and DeScalfani
-the Marlins really want Mathias, said they were after him for 10 years but he was untouchable for the Angels; the Marlins said narrow the search down from 3 to 2 of the big 3. The last prospect was the problem - these were the last 2 pieces
-The Jays said no Sanchez and gave the option to the Marlins to select between Nicolino and Syndergaard
-When agreed to, Selig said he wouldnt approve the deal
-Many thought Selig wouldnt approve because he didnt like the deal for the Marlins, but on the contrary;
-Selig didnt want the Jays to take on all that money, Selig thought the Jays were crazy to take on all that money as it can hurt the team - made sure he ran it by Rogers again
-He approved it after Rogers said ok
-Deal was done pending physicals
-AA called the Marlins and said Josh Johnson failed his physical. Marlins said, well Henderson Alvarez failed his physical too
-They both agreed to the failed physicals because they Jays were SO invested in the deal, they could not back out now as they really wanted to get the deal done - Jays werent going to say no
-Samson says the Jays lost, Marlins clearly won the deal from a WAR perspective, control and most importantly a financial perspective
-Hardest deal Samson had to make, says Buerhle wont talk to him to this day

Samson's full of crap at the best of times, so I don't doubt there is a lot of added spin here. Doesn't make AA look good at all. And he would have given up Syndergaard? Granted, that was earlier in the development of the Lansing 3, but still.

I believe Samson's version. I remember reading that the Mets had the same choice in the Dickey trade, except it was either Syndergaard or Sanchez, and they chose Syndergaard (either that or the Jays chose to keep Sanchez over Syndergaard, don't recall exactly). Johnson failing his physical isn't far fetched. His velocity was down in Toronto and he was never healthy ever again after that. I don't think anything else he said was hard to imagine being accurate. The Marlins bent Alex over.

Tanner wrote:I believe Samson's version. I remember reading that the Mets had the same choice in the Dickey trade, except it was either Syndergaard or Sanchez, and they chose Syndergaard (either that or the Jays chose to keep Sanchez over Syndergaard, don't recall exactly). Johnson failing his physical isn't far fetched. His velocity was down in Toronto and he was never healthy ever again after that. I don't think anything else he said was hard to imagine being accurate. The Marlins bent Alex over.

It’s not about believing one version or another in its entirety, it’s just realizing that there will be spin and white lies told in their versions from both sides.

Anyways, I remember how exciting this trade looked from the Jays side at the time but I also thought Johnson was the biggest key to the deal. An all-star level pitcher when healthy who was never healthy in Toronto. And since Toronto should have seen this coming since he failed the physical, this should have been a deal breaker and they should have forced the Marlins to renegotiate. Obviously this was a salary the Marlins desperately wanted to unload.

Reyes, as we found out, couldn’t play SS anymore and MB was just an innings eater. Overall the haul was big on names and small on current production level.