Scott Cooper doesn’t get enough credit for helping David Ortiz get to Boston
COMMENTARY
Scott Cooper might deserve more respect around here.
The former Red Sox third baseman really only gets a passing mention in Boston around the All-Star break, a reference to his presence as the team’s lone All-Star representative for two straight years, despite numbers that paled in comparison to those of teammate Mo Vaughn.
Between 1993-94, Cooper hit .280 with 22 home runs and 116 runs batted in, statistics dwarfed by his first base counterpart over the same period; .302, 55 home runs, 183 RBI. But with a gluttony of worthy first basemen in the AL (John OIerud, Cecil Fielder, Frank Thomas, and Will Clark each made it in lieu of Vaughn over the two seasons) Vaughn got the pass in favor of…well, Cooper, making sure the Red Sox were represented in both Baltimore and Pittsburgh. Sure.
By 1995, Vaughn finally made his first All-Star team — in an MVP season to boot — in the months after the Red Sox traded pitcher Corey Bailey and Cooper, their one-time, budding superstar (who was supposed to be on track to supplant Wade Boggs for the long-term at third), to the St. Louis Cardinals for Rheal Cormier and Mark Whiten.
Whiten lasted all of 32 games here in ’95 (batting only .185 with one home run), also experiencing, “on-the-field and off-the-field” problems. By July, general manager Dan Duquette flipped him to the Philadelphia Phillies for slugger Dave Hollins.
Hollins managed to hit .154 over five games before being diagnosed with a fractured right hammate bone. Whiten went from Philadelphia to Atlanta to Seattle before the year was out.
Hollins would be a free agent after the season. He signed with the Minnesota Twins.
Now, this was important to the Seattle Mariners because they needed some extra pop in their 1996 chase of the AL West crown (they ended up finishing 4 1/2 games behind the Texas Rangers). So, when they came calling about Hollins (who hit 13 home runs over 121 games with the Twins), Minnesota traded him for a player to be named later.
That guy turned out to be David Ortiz.
“It was one of the worst trades ever made,” Ortiz’s former minor league manager Mike Goff said in an ESPN.com oral history of the impromptu home run derby in Wisconsin during which the slugger opened some eyes on the Mariners’ sideline 20 years ago.
“I remember [Seattle manager] Lou Piniella commenting later on, something like, ‘John, how did we let this guy get away?’ But we had no idea,” former Mariners third base coach John McLaren said. “He really wasn’t on our radar screen. I know the minor league people liked him and stuff, but he was in A-ball and back then, they didn’t have the minor league rankings and the big hype like they have today. He wasn’t somebody that we talked about in our plans going forward because that was low A-ball. Obviously we didn’t know what we had or we wouldn’t have made that deal. But at the time we needed a third baseman, and Hollins was a proven veteran player.”
Ortiz hit .266 with 58 home runs over six years with the Twins, leading to his release in December of 2002. Theo Epstein signed him the next month. You know the rest.
Scott Cooper had come full circle.
Cooper was terrible for the Cardinals, hitting only .230 with three home runs for his hometown team. He signed with the Kansas City Royals the following season and hit only .201. It would be his final season in the major leagues.
So, if Duquette never dealt him in 1994, would the Red Sox have ever gotten Hollins out of desperation from the Phillies? And if Hollins never signed with the Twins, might we have instead seen Ortiz, Ken Griffey Jr., and Alex Rodriguez together in the same lineup for a handful of seasons?
“It was tough, man,” Ortiz said in the ESPN piece. “Ken Griffey Jr. was everybody’s favorite. I’m pretty sure a lot of kids at the time wanted to hit like him. But I always dreamed of playing in the big leagues with Ken Griffey Jr. It never happened.”
Nope.
Thanks to Scott Cooper.
Forgotten Red Sox All-Stars
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