At the time it was a high stakes game of baccarat. The Florida Marlins traded Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis to the Detroit Tigers for Andrew Miller, Cameron Maybin, Mike Rabelo, Eulogio De La Cruz, Burke Badenhop, and Dallas Trahern. Six players (including two "untouchable" prospects) for a superstar and a reliable pitcher. A win-win.

Perhaps a year and a half after the fact is too soon to declare a victor in the trade. Nevertheless, let us pine:

Miguel Cabrera — I'm looking at the all-time Tigers career home runs list. They've never had someone hit 400 with the team. Sure, they've had Juan Gonzalez and Gary Sheffield (who now has 500), but those were brief moments in their careers I'm sure most Tigers fans would rather soon forget with the right amount of blunt force trauma. Al Kaline retired with 399 home runs. He would have had 400 except he missed two months of a season with a broken collarbone suffered while diving for the final out in a 2-1 victory over the Yankees. So let's just say he has 400 homers for his career. He earned it.

That would make Miguel Cabrera the second (and first non-honorary) member of the Tigers' 400 Dingers Club. Every year he's an MVP candidate, and he may even pick up a few Gold Gloves along the way. I think when he was traded as a 24-year-old, everybody saw many more years like this to come. However, they didn't expect the downfall of...

Dontrelle Willis — The 2003 Rookie of the Year. A Cy Young-type year in 2005 (22-10, 2.63 ERA, five shutouts). There was a noticeable decline leading up to his trade, but who expected a 1-6 record and an 8.27 ERA in 15 games over two years? No two ways about it, this was a disaster acquisition, and when we're talking about the worst trades Detroit ever made (Doyle Alexander for John Smoltz, Luis Gonzalez (and cash!) for Karim Garcia, Juan Gonzalez for half of Hamtramck), if we could isolate the Willis component, it would probably take the cake, the icing, and even those little plastic flowers. (Are they plastic? Are they edible? I've always just avoided them.)

So if half of the Tigers' satchel of goodies included magic beans, did they in turn give away snake oil?

Cameron Maybin — How young was this guy when he got called up to the bigs? He was still wearing braces. The first round pick of 2005 is in Triple-A New Orleans, but the 22-year-old is all but the future centerfielder for the Marlins. By this I mean the Marlins will flip him to a big market team for four more prospects in three years.

Article Author: Matthew T. Sussman

Sussman is the sports editor of BC Magazine and the executive editor of Technorati. He also writes for Deadspin and Toledo Free Press. He and Tuffy can be heard hosting the Treehouse Fort, Sundays at 7 p.m. ET. Plus, he Twitters. …

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