Baseball Opinion - Over Spilled Milk: Walker for Ochoa

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Over Spilled Milk: Walker for Ochoa

Christopher Solberg, Editor
4/14/2008

Over Spilled Milk is a relatively new feature at Baseball Opinion where we will look back on previous drafts and trades to see how well the teams involved fared. Essentially, we will rehash issues like the Scott Kazmir trade to the Devil Rays that are still making Mets fans 'cry over spilled milk'.

In another edition of Over Spilled Milk, I will review a trade from 2001. The Todd Walker from the Colorado Rockies to the Cincinnati Reds for Alex Ochoa trade was one of my first Trade Bait articles. Todd Walker was having a decent year for the Rockies, but being in a rebuilding mode, they decided to trade him away. Ochoa looked like an up and coming player that could take off in Coors Field. He had enough promise that the Rockies even offered Robin Jennings with Walker to get him.

Looking back, my analysis of the trade was a bit off, but neither really impacted their team negatively or positively. Todd went to Cincinnati where his power fell off some, as expected, but he hit for average and got on base at a decent pace for the Reds in 2001 and 2002. His defense was never something to write home about, but his bat would make you easily forget Pokey Reese.

Alex Ochoa didn’t develop into the perennial .300 AVG / 20 HR / 20 SB threat that I thought he’d become. Although he had a great 2000 for the Reds, putting up a .316 average with a .964 OPS in 264 at-bats, he never hit that well again in the majors. He continued to move about the majors, going to Japan eventually, before returning to the States and playing for Triple-A Pawtucket last season. He was a decent fourth outfielder at times, but nothing more. But many teams seemed to have seen some of the stuff that I saw in him as he was traded seven times during his career.

Robin Jennings was a minor league outfielder that, at 29 didn’t have much upside, but he provided the Reds with a .519 slugging percentage in 77 at-bats the remainder of that season. But he didn’t amount to much else, leaving baseball after 2003.

Although none of these players really made a real impact for their teams, the Reds definitely walked away from this trade as winners.

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