This one was bound to go down to the wire. After days of rumors swirling around him, Twins catcher Drew Butera has finally been traded to the Dodgers, according to Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports. Butera nets the Twins the mighty haul of a player to be named later or cash- their choice, Jayson Stark of ESPN reports.
Ok. So this isn't exactly the last-minute, franchise-altering, blockbuster deal that fans (or writers, really) were hoping for. There were never any rumors swirling around Butera and there is no chance that the player to be named later will be Clayton Kershaw or Yasiel Puig. This is, as Brown tweeted, an organizational move giving the Dodgers insurance at catcher. Nothing more.
In that way, it was the perfect final deal for this year's deadline, which has made the ending of Monty Python and the Holy Grail seem downright satisfying. Sure Matt Garza and Jake Peavy got traded. The Cubs finally unloaded Alfonso Soriano and that Ian Kennedy deal was a nice little swap of interesting talent for a clear-cut need, but twenty minutes out from the deadline, Bud Norris was the biggest name actually be seriously discussed. Bud. Norris.
This reaction care of the Bleacher Report, pretty well sums up the general feeling among those covering the game today-
In summing up #MLB trade deadline activity, a Shakespearean theme comes to mind..."Much Ado About Nothing"
— Bleacher Report (@BR_MLB) July 31, 2013
As a result, this inncoent trade of a backup catcher for someone without a name (poor guy, stuck being nameless must be hard) took on added significance as a way to mock the hype that all of us worked so hard to create-
Drew Butera to the Dodgers? Joke's on everyone who said this deadline was slow.
— Ben Lindbergh (@ben_lindbergh) July 31, 2013
@templedavid: "It's Puig, right?" RT @ScottMCBS C Drew Butera from Twins to Dodgers. Twins get a player to be named later
— Mike Bates (@commnman) July 31, 2013
As you might expect though, no one summed up their frustration with the lack of deals better than our one of our own-
The only deal that went down right at the deadline was Drew Butera for a player to be named later. Who, you ask?... Exactly.
— Nathan Aderhold (@AdrastusPerkins) July 31, 2013
Now that we have all had a chance to laugh off the disappoint of an uneventful trade deadline at his expense, it seems like the least someone can do would be explain just who this guy is.
29-year-old Andrew Edward Butera is a right-handed hitting catcher who has played with the Twins in parts of four season. He was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the 48th round of the 2002 draft out of an Orlando prep school, but chose to attend the University of Central Florida instead. He was drafted again in the fifth round of the 2005 draft by the New York Mets. In, 2007 he was dealt to the Twins along with outfielder Dustin Martin for Luis Castillo. He first made the major leagues in 2010, hitting .197/.237/.296 in 155 plate appearances as a backup catcher. He has a career batting line of 182/.230/.263 and today, he was the very last deal of a remarkably dull trade deadline, immortalizing him forever (or until the first waiver-wire deal at least).