Ed Wade Said He Could Have Traded Utley In A Package Zito

Ed Wade has been criticized for the trades he made with the Phillies, but the former Philadelphia GM reminded people that he was fired, so it would not make sense for him to help out the organization. During a discussion with CSN Philly, Wade discussed some trades that could have happened years ago. Over the course of my eight years as general manager, there were opportunities to trade a lot of good players for good players in return. There was one deal that probably would have been very, very popular for a very short period of time. I had a conversation with Billy Beane of the Oakland A’s regarding Barry Zito, and if we had acquired Barry Zito at that time at the top of his game it would have been a very popular move. The cost of doing business was Chase Utley, Ryan Madson and Michael Bourn. We said no and the rest is history. The types of decisions we were making at that time, whether it was considering trading Ryan Howard, or keeping that core nucleus of guys, was that there had...