On July 29, 1988; Lou Gorman made a trade that worked out well for both teams sending Red Sox prospects Brady Anderson and Curt Schilling to the Baltimore Orioles for veteran right hander Mike Boddicker. Anderson was a big time prospect and broke camp with the big-league at the beginning of the year and was sent back to Pawtucket by May. Schilling was a wild righty with good stuff, but a five-cent brain. At the time, no one really expected Schilling to do anything but Boston fans were nervous about losing Anderson.
Anderson didn't have his breakout year until four season later in 1992 and became a three-time All Star with O's for the rest of the 1990s. Curt Schilling has a very good shot of making the Hall of Fame (if he can shut his mouth for more than five minutes) but didn't reach his potential until after the Houston Astros (who acquired him from an exasperated Orioles club) sent him to Philadelphia. In the City of Brotherly Love and with the Arizona Diamondbacks and back to the Red Sox, Schilling took off and became a perennial All-Star as well as one of the more dominant pitchers for the next 15 years. He lead his teams to four World Series, winning three of them -- including two all timers in 2001 and 2004.
Mike Boddicker played with the Sox for two-and-a-half seasons compiling a 39-22 record before signing a free agent deal with the Kansas City Royals in the winter of 1990 and played for the Brewers in his last season.
Why did this deal work out for both teams? The Orioles received two players that had they used patience with BOTH former Sox prospects would have seen a better return on their investment. But they only stuck with Anderson and he proved to be a player to wait for. Anderson had one of the strangest home run years in 1996 when he 50 round trippers, he never hit more than 24 before or after that year. When the O's began a mini renaissance in the Charm City, Anderson was one of their better players.
Boddicker was the perfect fit for the Sox needs from 1988 through 1990. In July of 1988, the Sox were hot as hell flushed with Morgan Magic. They had Roger Clemens and Bruce Hurst to lead them, but after that, the pitching staff was pretty bleak. Gorman got Boddicker and he was the perfect third man in the rotation, going 7-3 with a 2.63 ERA for his new team. Not too bad.
And with Hurst departing for San Diego that winter, he fit in nicely behind Clemens as the number two man on the staff winning 15 and 17 games in the next two seasons before taking off to KC.
The reason why this trade works out for both teams is because where they were at at the time. The Sox were in the middle of a pennant race and couldn't afford to waste time on players that might be good in two, three or in Schilling and Anderson's case, four to five seasons down the road. Baltimore, on the other hand, had nothing but time. That year they started 0-22 and were in the midst of a full-fledged rebuild--wasting Cal Ripken's prime in the mean time--they had nothing else to do but see if the kids they had in their minor league system would hit. And some did.
Most of the time, baseball trades aren't that big of a deal, they really don't change a team too much. Every once in awhile there will be a steal of a deal (like when Gorman sent Jeff Bagwell to the Astros for Larry Andersen in 1990) but those are few and far between. Even more rarer are the trades that help both teams, like this one.
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