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Over Spilled Milk: Urbina for Ohka, Rundles

Christopher Solberg, Editor
5/27/2008

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 the infancy of The Baseball Opinion, I reviewed a trade of the once-dominating reliever Ugueth Urbina from the then Montreal Expos to the Boston Red Sox.  Ugueth Urbina, or “Ugie”, was recovering from an injury in 2001, but was starting to show he was back to his dominant form, enough that he interested the Boston Red Sox at the trade deadline. 

Although Urbina carried a 4.24 ERA with Expos, he seemed to find his groove with the Red Sox, notching 9 saves while sporting a 2.25 ERA in 20 innings.  He then went on to post 40 saves the following season for the Red Sox before leaving via free agency.  Ugie went on to pitch for a few other teams until he ran into some severe legal problems (14 years of jail worth) in his native Venezula.

In return for Urbina, the Expos brought back pitchers Tomo Ohka and Rich Rundles.  Ohka was a decent innings-eater for the Expos/Nationals from 2002-2005.  Although he compiled a losing record (31-34) over that span, Tomo did have an ERA under 4.00 for three of those five seasons (or parts of seasons) with a team that carried a relatively unproductive offense.  He was traded during the 2005 season for second baseman Junior Spivey in an attempt to fill the void left by an injured Jose Vidro.  Spivey didn’t amount to much for the Nationals and Ohka started a downward spiral after leaving Washington.

Rich Rundles was a lefty that had a decent chance of making it to the majors based mainly on his left-handed arm and the low walk rates that he was posting for Boston’s Single-A Augusta team that year.  He was putting up a 2.43 ERA in 115 innings, while walking only 10.  He progressed slowly through the Expos/Nationals system, never really impressing after the trade.  Rich has recently bounced from team to team the past couple years, showing his best success over the past couple seasons with the Indians after finally switching to full-time relief.  His line so far this season is interesting as he has 24 Ks in 18.1 innings, but his 11 walks are a large reason why he has a 3.93 ERA.  It doesn’t look as if he’s been used strictly as a lefty specialist though, an aspect that may be more intriguing.

Although at the time I proclaimed that the Red Sox would come out the victor of this trade, it looks somewhat different now.  Urbina did help repair the Red Sox bullpen at the time and was pretty dominant as their closer in 2002.  But, in rebuttal, Ohka was a solid innings eater for the Nationals for a few seasons.  Essentially, I would call it closer to a tie for these two clubs.  Even though Ohka was solid for the Nationals for longer than Urbina was in Boston, Ugie’s presence as closer during that short period of time was more impressive.  Had Boston received a compensation pick for Urbina and he turned out well, or Rundles turned into something more, the scales would have tipped one way or another.

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