Ed. note: Click here to see Rob’s recaps of the other major trades from the Great Teardown.
The first big trade that Coppy made was trading Jason Heyward and Jordan Walden for Shelby Miller and Tyrell Jenkins. Like Justin Upton, Heyward was one year away from free agency, and with seemingly no hope of re-signing him, they decided to get something significant for him instead of leaving for free agency. By this point, it was not publicly declared (and perhaps not even internally decided) that they were in the midst of a rebuild, so receiving back a major league piece like Shelby seemed to be important.