Mets Trades: Who Won?
Year 6: November 2015 through October 2016.
The winter of 2015 got started by not re-signing their new power hitting hero who led them to the last World Series appearance to date. So without a second baseman, the Mets kind of needed one.
They kicked off their 2015-2016 off-season by solving that problem. That would be the only trade during the hot stove, sitting tight until mid-season when they spent the rest of the year trying to get some of their old players back.
The only off-season deal of 2015-16:
(1) New York Mets traded Akeel Morris to
the Atlanta Braves for Kelly Johnson
(Jun 08, 2015)
(4) New York Mets traded Erik Manoah to the Los Angeles Angels for Fernando Salas (Aug 31, 2016)
Kind of a ho-hum year for trades.
Walker actually played reasonably well in 2016, giving them 2.2 bWAR. Not enough to forget Daniel Murphy, but better than Dilson Herrera.
Herrera seemed to be a fan favorite at the time and many were disappointed when he was traded. His career never got going the way some people thought it might.
Salas was a serviceable bullpen arm for the last month, pitching to about a 2 ERA in 17 games.
Johnson was OK; Bruce and Niese never got it going in 2016 as the team fell short of the Nats by 8.0 games. With their second place finish, they actually finished 18.5 games ahead of the Braves that year - only 4 years ago. Memories are short.
Not terrible trades - timid year of trades.
ReplyDeleteNothing stands out here or hurt us in the long-term
ReplyDeleteThis was the second time that the Mets traded players to the Braves for Kelly Johnson. Thought that the first time worked out better - Johnson was a key bench piece in the 2015 run. In the 2016 season he didn't do much.
ReplyDeleteThe trade for Jay Bruce didn't help the Mets much, but that's only because Jay Bruce proved that he couldn't perform in a large market like he did in a small market. This trade did have an interesting after-effect though, as the Mets later included Bruce in the trade that brought the two over-paid problems Cano and Diaz to our team.
Paul, I agree with you about Johnson - great pick up in 2015, not so much a year later.
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree with you about Bruce and the large market/small market conclusion tho. He did get off to a horrible start after the trade in 2016, but had a decent September and his first 103 games in 2017 with the Mets were one of his bast seasons in the majors. With his 29 homers, 75 RBI, and .841 OPS at the end of July, he was traded to Cleveland where he fell flat again. The Mets re-signed him as a free agent after 2017, mostly on his body of work from April through July of that year. Unfortunately, he never came back to that level, either with the Mets or anyone else that followed.
And yes, Bruce was included after a year back in New York as a salary dump in the trade to Seattle, but I'm not sure you can categorize Diaz an overpaid problem. Cano, I'll give ya; Diaz, glad to have that guy.