What Could Have Been

May 12, 2013; San Francisco, CA, USA; Atlanta Braves second baseman Dan Uggla (26) scores a run against the San Francisco Giants during the ninth inning at ATIn November the Toronto Blue Jays had a multi-purpose press conference. Alex Anthopoulos talked about the hiring of John Gibbons, the Marlins trade and the Melky signing.

When AA was talking about the Marlins trade he talked about how the Marlins GM Larry Beinfest is good to work with. He knew that Beinfest is good to work with because he had experience working with him a couple of years ago on a trade for Dan Uggla.

Despite the fact that AA never ever ever ever talks about transactions that didn’t happen this little tidbit seemed to go over everybody’s heads. There was no talk about it from baseball writers, media or fans. Maybe people were too excited about the Jays offseason to give it a second thought but it still seemed weird that it went so unnoticed.

So with the Jays set to begin a series with Dan Uggla’s Atlanta Braves lets finally talk about it.

AA’s first year as Blue Jays GM was 2010. That was also the last season Dan Uggla played for the Marlins.

AA probably didn’t try to acquire Uggla in his first offseason since Aaron Hill was coming off a breakout year in 2009 so the Blue Jays didn’t need a 2nd basemen. Maybe AA wanted to move Hill or Uggla to 3rd base because who would want to give playing time to that bum 3rd basemen Edwin Encarnacion anyways.

It still seems strange that AA would try to acquire Uggla during the 2010 season because that means that the Jays may have given up on Hill in his first down season.

After the 2010 season, Uggla rejected a four-year, $48 million contract offer from the Marlins. (If Uggla had accepted that offer maybe the Jays would have ended up getting him in the Marlins trade after all!) The Marlins traded Uggla to the Braves for Omar Infante and reliever Michael Dunn. Quite the underpay considering Uggla was coming off the best season of his career. Uggla then signed with the Braves for 5 years and 62 million.

You know AA could pull off underpaying for a player to but Uggla probably wouldn’t have stayed with the Jays. At the very least they could have gotten a high compensation draft pick when he left after the 2011 season.

That would have given the Jays a 1 year head start on finding a new 2nd basemen which would have been nice if you’ve been following this season closely. Or maybe the Jays find a way to keep Uggla around and 2nd base isn’t as big a hole for the team right now.

Even if the Jays only had Uggla for 2010 or 2011 he hit 30+ homeruns those seasons so that would have been fun to watch.