Troy Tulowitzki settled into a 1,000-yard stare. Wilmer Flores bawled his eyes red. And Ubaldo Jimenez? His mind spun off into some other realm.
In baseball, the trade deadline works as in no other sport. Players show up for work for weeks on the hot seat. Then suddenly, they get ripped away from their teams — often in the middle of a game.
Imagine if Peyton Manning, in Week 12 of the Broncos’ season, suddenly left the fourth quarter of a tie game. Never mind the Broncos trying to win. Manning just got traded to Baltimore. And the Ravens don’t want their new quarterback risking injury.
RELATED:
That’s what happened to the Rockies on Monday night. With a one-run lead heading to the bottom of the ninth inning at Wrigley Field in Chicago, manager Walt Weiss benched his best player. Or, rather, his now-former best player. Weiss had to tell Tulo he was no longer on the team.
Tulowitzki sat in the dugout, his eyes as wide as baseballs, staring straight ahead. The all-star shortstop had been traded to Toronto in a blockbuster deal, the most important in Rockies history. By Tuesday, he was still shell-shocked.
“I felt like I got blindsided a bit,” Tulowitzki said from a hotel while waiting for a flight to Canada.
Major League Baseball’s trade deadline week is a sprint to 2 p.m. on July 31. Since expanding from one to two wild-card teams in each league in 2012, more teams than ever have a shot at the World Series.
Last week, 28 of the 30 teams made at least one trade. And 21 all-stars — totaling 51 All-Star Game appearances — were traded, the most since at least 1999, according to MLB.
“When you’re in the middle of trade rumors, it’s miserable,” . “But for the rest of us, it’s fun.”
It was a lot more miserable than fun for Flores, the 23-year-old New York Mets shortstop who signed with the team when he was 16. He came to bat Tuesday in the seventh inning and got a standing ovation in Queens. He didn’t know why. When he walked to the infield in the next inning, fans shouted to him that he had been traded. They were sending him off.
Flores .
“I was sad, being with the Mets forever,” “I heard from the fans there was a rumor I was getting traded. The fans were cheering for me. It was difficult.
“I didn’t want to make that scene out there. I couldn’t help it.”
Mets manager Terry Collins talked Flores back into the game. There was no trade, not yet. And it eventually fell through.
“To be politically correct, there’s a lot of BS out there — a lot of it,” Collins told reporters after the game. “The kid comes off the field tonight. He hears he’s traded. He’s upset by it, and I don’t know anything about it.
“You guys think these guys are stone-cold robots. They’re not. They’re human beings who have emotions.”
Reports of Flores’ trade were accurate, but premature. The deal was in place but not yet completed. Fans read about the trade on Twitter. And Flores heard from them as the Mets’ front office was still hammering out details. Collins was livid.
“Everybody’s got a telephone. Everybody’s on it,” Collins said. “I don’t even know why anybody comes anymore. They ought to just sit home, watch games on TV and on their cellphones.”
Flores found a happy ending. On Friday, deadline day, he hit a walk-off home run to give New York a dramatic victory over the Washington Nationals.
“That’s one of the best walk-off homers I’ve ever seen — considering everything,” Mets outfielder Michael Cuddyer told reporters after the game.
Flores’ near-trade and Tulowitzki’s actual trade exposed the ugly underside of trade deadline week. Suddenly, the importance of winning games becomes secondary. Tulowitzki, a five-time all-star and a two-time Gold Glove award winner, is one of the best defensive shortstops in baseball. But he was yanked in the final inning of a close game for backup Daniel Descalso.
“I think if we could’ve drawn up the night of the trade differently, we would have,” .
The same can probably be said about another Rockies trade. In 2011, Colorado general manager Dan O’Dowd . But only after Jimenez pitched one odd inning at San Diego. Before his final game with the Rockies, Jimenez knew he was about to be traded. So did his manager, Jim Tracy. But because the deal wasn’t quite done, they trotted Jimenez out to start.
He gave up four runs. Then he hugged all his teammates and walked out the door.
“I couldn’t even throw a strike, because I didn’t have my mind on the game,” . “I couldn’t focus.”
The traditional hug goodbyes between teammates has become a key signifier. During trade week, fans and TV broadcasts keep an eye on the dugout for hugs. It often means a trade has been completed.
San Diego Padres outfielder Justin Upton, aware he was on the trade block, spun the traditional dugout hugs into a prank. the cameras would see him. But he hadn’t been traded.
The trade deadline isn’t even over. Teams can continue to make trades through the waiver process. Prepare for more nuttiness.
“It’s definitely a soft deadline,” Bridich said. “Just because we reached the deadline doesn’t mean it’s the end of the trading season.”
Nick Groke: ngroke@denverpost.com or twitter.com/nickgroke
