Reflecting on the James Shields Trade: 12 Years Later

The year was 2012 and the Kansas City Royals had just finished the season at 72-90. It was yet another disappointing season in the semi-early Dayton Moore era. This team wasn’t completely useless though. The Royals had just had the first full season for their new young core of Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Alcides Escobar, and Salvador Perez (even though he started the season hurt).

They were added to the mix of the younger Royals stars, Alex Gordon and Billy Butler. So looking back, as you could imagine, the offense wasn’t particularly the issue. It was the pitching staff that took the hit. Jeremy Guthrie was the best option out there and he didn’t even play for the Royals at the beginning of the season. It was time for the Royals to make a move. They needed an ace — a top-of-the-rotation type of guy who would consistently provide this team with innings.

Now we shift to December 9th, 2012, where 12-year-old me is watching MLB Network on a Sunday night when everything was on reruns. Kinda makes sense that I’m writing this here today, but anyway. The breaking news ticker came across the bottom of the screen, and I was excited. Who was signing this time? But I sat there and read it four to five times and didn’t believe it.

James Shields, Wade Davis, and a player to be named later (Elliot Johnson) were traded to the Royals in exchange for prospects Wil Myers, Jake Ordorizzi, Mike Montgomery, and Patrick Leonard.

It just blew my mind. Shields was recently involved in all of the Rays’ postseason success, and he was the big dog who came to town and set a precedent for this rotation. Dayton Moore said that this young core was ready to win, and they needed to experience winning. That is why this deal came to fruition. Of course, the Royals had just finished the 2012 Winter Meetings, and it was clear that the Royals weren’t going to spend money on the Free Agent market. Hence why they traded the 2012 Minor League Player of the Year in Wil Myers. At the time, I remember there being a bunch of outcry about the Royals making the wrong decision, that this guy is going to be a superstar and Shields is just a pitcher. The Royals would regret this trade. Well, let’s look back at this trade and how every piece ended up working out, now TWELVE years later. That is hard to believe

The 2012 minor league player of the year was incredible in that season. He was a top prospect in the Royals system of course, and it was to wonder why the Royals didn’t try to bring him up at some point that season. He started out killing it at Double-A, got the promotion to ,T,riple-A and continued to mash. At Triple-A in 2012, Myers hit 24 homers in 90 games, hit .304, and drove in 79 runs. The Rays saw that potential and decided to trade away one of their most reliable starters in franchise history in exchange for him. Myers burst onto the scene in 2013 for the Rays en route to winning Rookie of the Year in the American League. Looking like an out-of-the-park move for the Rays who went to the postseason that year. After that, Myers was not good in Tampa Bay. His 2014 season was terrible, having a negative WAR, only hitting .222 with almost no power. It was a polar opposite to his Award-winning rookie season. As a result, Myers found him a part of *another* huge trade that offseason. The Rays ended up trading Myers to the Padres in a three-team deal that included many future major leaguers, including Trea Turner as a throw-in. Full compensation is here:

So at that point, the Rays just completely sold off that value and none of the players they acquired in that deal amounted to anything for the Rays. So, you close the book on Myers in Tampa. The odds of the Royals winning this trade are now considerably higher. Myers went to San Diego and put together his best seasons as a Major Leaguer. Although, never reached that star status he had before. He was an All-Star in 2016 and that remained his only ASG appearance. An above-average baseball player is what Wil Myers became, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

He had some really solid years with the Padres, hitting 30 homers once, and continually showed value defensively. He still did more than many can ever accomplish, and he was part of a game-changing trade, unfortunately, the game-changing part is for the team that traded him away. I will forever be thankful for Wil Myers even though he didn’t even put on a Royals uniform. But I know many speculate what may have happened if he had stayed. Which is fun to think about, sure, but given what took place, I would like to not think about what would happen if he had stayed.

Jake Odorizzi made his major league debut with the Royals in 2012, but once traded, he became a reliable starter in his career. Over his ten-year career, he had a career 3.99 ERA. A solid piece for any team, Odorizzi spent most of his career with the Tampa Bay Rays where he was a staple in their rotation from 2014-2017. He threw almost 700 innings with a 3.81 ERA during that stretch, before getting traded once again, to the Twins before the 2018 season.

I don’t think it’s hard to say that this was the best player for the Rays in the long term from this trade. Odorizzi had a very respectable career, similar to Myers, and if you play a decade in The Show you can’t complain about that. Odorizzi even notched a World Series ring in his last season in 2022, even though he wasn’t actively on the team, he did pitch in 12 games for them. Good for Odorizzi, I think one of the most fun things in baseball is to follow the careers of former players in your favorite teams’ system, and I always kept an eye out for him.

One of the most peculiar things about Mike Montgomery is that his numbers as a pitcher got worse as when he left the Royals organization. How often has that happened? Montgomery’s Rays career ended just about as fast as it started, as he was traded to the Mariners for Erasmo Ramirez. Montgomery struggled in the minors with the Rays with ERAs in the 6s in Double-A for the Rays. A fresh start in Seattle gave him his major league debut where he was pretty reliable in 16 starts.

He got traded to Chicago in 2016 after the Mariners saw he could hold it down in the bullpen. With the Cubs, he had his career-defining highlight. Montgomery recorded the final out to end the Championship drought for the Chicago Cubs. If you think about it, without him the Cubs wouldn’t have ended their 106-year World Series drought. With the Cubs, he was a starter and reliever on and off, but he made it clear that he wanted to start even though he wasn’t necessarily great. The Cubs then traded him back to the Royals in 2019, where he could start and play every day with the team that originally gave him a shot. Let’s just put it like it was, he was not good for the Royals in his return. And after the horrific 2020 season, he decided to hang it up. Another player who had some moments, but didn’t amount to that top 15 prospect in all of baseball he once was.

This was just the throw-in prospect to the Rays at the end of this deal. In all due respect to Leonard, he didn’t amount to anything. Leonard bounced around to a few different minor league deals throughout his career but never made an MLB debut. He had a pretty good 2017 season in Triple-A where he hit 30+ doubles and ten HRs. That makes it a bit surprising that he never got at least a shot. The COVID season kinda killed his career, after canceling the 2020 minor league season. 

Now onto the Royals return, and we’ll start with the guy who was the player to be named later. He was a utility player for them, and I remember them highlighting how many gloves he had going into camp on the news. His Royals stint was quite small, only hitting .179 en route to getting designated for assignment in the middle of the 2013 season. His career pretty much ended right after that. With his career being pretty much done by the time he gets to KC. 

This was the big piece, and why the Royals made this deal but that goes without saying. “Big Game James” made it abundantly clear when he entered the clubhouse that he was going to change the whole mindset of the rotation. A thousand innings is what Shields was saying around to the other starters. He was very open and willing for him to be the change that the organization needed. And Shields completely changed the culture of this young team that needed direction. That in itself was worth what the Royals gave up for him, but his numbers with Kansas City showed his true drive to get things done himself.

While he was a part of the rotation he made every start that he could as part of the Royals with 34 starts in each of 2013 and 2014. In 2013, he even led the league in innings pitched. Shields was a model for all around him of what a major leaguer is and has to continue to be. Crazy enough, the entire team took his mentality of working the hardest you can, durability, and working for every one of his teammates. I think everyone knows what this man meant to the Royals organization and it did sting whenever he left in Free Agency after 2014.

Thankfully, the team that came back continued to embody Shields’s demeanor and we would not have the World Series in 2015 if not for Shields. James Shields’s outreach affects everyone on this team moving forward. He is the model of what a Kansas City Royal is, and honestly, it feels like he was here for longer than a couple of years. I wish we could’ve seen him again, but it was incredible to see him come back this year for the anniversary of the 2014 team. 

“The extra pitcher” involved in this trade was Wade Davis. The starter/opener for the Rays and the Royals liked what he could do. And in 2013 in the rotation, he was at least a stopgap for you. He made 24 starts and pretty much stayed a part of the rotation until the end of the year with the emergence of Yordano Ventura. In 2014, they switched him to the bullpen, which didn’t start that well. In his first couple of appearances, he gave up a couple of runs and people were wondering what he was going to do for this team.

After that, one of the best reliever seasons ever occurred. “Wader” had a 1.00 ERA on the season in 70 games. Yes, you read that right — 70 games pitched. Davis was untouchable with 109 strikeouts. He ended up being the eighth inning man for this team and created the basis of what a bullpen in major league baseball looks like for the future. They assembled a bullpen of “HDH”, Herrera, Davis, and Holland. Davis was the best of them all.

He ended up taking the closer role in 2015 when Greg Holland had to have Tommy John Surgery down the stretch ending his season. The Royals needed someone to step up. The most miraculous thing about Wade Davis is, that even though Holland was as good as he was, Davis made it seem like he never left. Davis was even better in 2015 with a 0.94 ERA. The two seasons together became one of the most dominant stretches from a relief pitcher in the history of Major League Baseball. The Royals didn’t end up making the playoffs the next season and ended up trading Davis to Chicago in exchange for Jorge Soler.

Soler didn’t amount to much in the grand scheme of things for the Royals, other than having the franchise home run record for a season with 48. Salvador Perez went on to tie that a few years later. In all, Davis had a really good year with Chicago which netted him a contract from the Colorado Rockies in 2018. Wade Davis then came back to the Royals in 2021 after having subpar years with the Rockies. Davis made the team out of spring, and on a team that was pretty useless let’s be honest, so it was nice that he could tie the bow on his career.

Looking back on this trade, we celebrate all the Championship that the Royals took because of this trade. Although James Shields wasn’t a part of that 2015 team, he is the reason they won it all that year. It didn’t hurt that the team also acquired one of the best relievers in franchise history in this trade. The Royals swindled the Rays, and of course, hindsight is 20/20, but it’s hard to believe Davis is a star for anyone else. Now, we look to the next trade that will shake up the Royals, and hopefully bring another franchise player to Kansas City.

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