Black (Friday) Pudding: The sweetest deals

Major League Baseball’s clubs are not immune to the annual shopping frenzy that is Black Friday. As much of the country is out scouring for deals in stores and online, front-office executives throughout baseball are doing the same on the trade and free-agent markets.

It’s the time of year that teams look to fine-tune existing rosters for a championship push or work toward a complete overhaul in a rebuilding effort. But regardless of the motive, the Hot Stove season has seen its fair share of player movement around Thanksgiving.

In perhaps the most notable of Black Friday deals, Theo Epstein, then the Red Sox’s general manager, spent Thanksgiving dinner at Curt Schilling’s Paradise Valley home in 2003, hoping to recruit the Hall of Famer to Boston.

• Hot Stove Tracker

A trade was already in place that would send Casey Fossum, Brandon Lyon, Jorge De La Rosa and Mike Goss to Arizona in exchange. All that remained was Epstein convincing Schilling to waive his no-trade clause. Negotiations spilled over to Black Friday, when the two sides eventually struck an agreement.

“If we didn’t sign Curt, it probably would have been the worst Thanksgiving of my life,” Epstein said.

Epstein’s holiday recruiting efforts, of course, helped Boston snap its 86-year title drought as Schilling, and his famously bloody sock, was instrumental to the club’s World Series run in both 2004 and ’07.

This accord is far from the only deal struck on Black Friday, however. Below is a closer look at some other transactions completed at the onset of the holiday shopping season.

Nov. 27, 2015 Just last year, the Blue Jays inked free-agent left-hander J.A. Happ as one of the first major signings of the offseason. Toronto’s holiday purchase proved to be a success as Happ enjoyed a career year, going 20-4 with a 3.18 ERA across 32 starts in the regular season. Happ also pitched well in the …

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