Wild Things' worst trade ever

Trades are always a roll of the dice, even in the Frontier League. Sometimes you strike it rich in a trade, such as when Washington acquired record-setting pitcher Aaron Ledbetter from River City. Most trades make little impact one way or another, and many involve teams sending players who are ticketed for the unemployment line to another team for the every-popular player to be named.

Then, sometimes a trade simply makes no sense. One such deal was made by Washington last summer when it sent pitcher Matt Sergey to the Laredo Lemurs of the American Association. Sergey, who might recall, pitched the only perfect game in Frontier League history in August of 2014 against the Gateway Grizzlies, the team the Wild Things will be hosting in a doubleheader tonight.

Sergey made 11 starts for Washington last year and had a 3-4 record with a 2.76 ERA. With any kind of offensive support at all (sounds like a line used when describing every Washington pitcher in the last five years), Sergey's record could have been 7-2. But Sergey had fallen out of favor with manager Bob Bozzuto for sure, and apparently also with pitching coach Ben Moore. A cranky arm was part of Sergey's problem, but when Sergey was healthy and on, then he was almost hittable.

Bozzuto wanted to clean house and plan for 2016, so he traded Sergey to the Laredo Lemurs of the American Association in exchange for two players to be named. Washington did get catcher Alex McKeon from Laredo this spring, but he was likely the player owed to the Wild Things in the Jeudy Valdez trade from last year.

So Washington still has nothing to show for the Sergey trade. Meanwhile, all Sergey did for Laredo was pitch 20 innings late last year for Laredo. They were 20 scoreless innings. Then, in the postseason, Sergey went 1-0 in two starts with a 2.79 ERA and helped the Lemurs win the American Association championship.

This year, Sergey picked up where he left off by going 4-0 in seven starts with an 0.81 ERA for Laredo. If you're counting, that's 73 2/3 innings pitched with a Lemurs and only seven earned runs allowed in 12 starts. That's an ERA of 0.86.

Think the Wild Things could have used that kind of production?

By the way, Sergey, who was ready to be put on the scrap heap by the Wild Things, had his contract purchased Tuesday by the Oakland Athletics.