Remember 1969: Who Won?

 

Remember's Ramblings:  Who won?    A new series . .

I am going to borrow some of Tom Brennan’s ideas to run another series of short articles.   First, using Tom's 'Escaping from Mets Purgatory' column of 14 September 2021 as a springboard, my interest was piqued to see how widespread his postulation of former Mets having better seasons/careers with a new club really goes.    While he discussed the likes of Travis d'Arnaud, Wilmer Flores, Paul Sewald, Steven Matz, and Zack Wheeler, I wondered really how many players were really in that boat.

So, with a shout-out to the ultimatemets.com website, I have captured a nearly complete list of Mets transactions involving major league players from 1961 up to the Javy Baez trade in July.    I have done some 'data massaging' and have separated out the coming in from the going out.   

The Mets can add players through trades, free agent signings, drafting, claims off waiver wires, and straight purchase.  They lose players through the same means.  I have separated and sorted all transactions by type and date.   Since there is a lot of data (1765 total transactions, 408 of them are trades), a smaller breakdown is required.  

I am now stealing more from Tom and his excellent recent draft year series and would like to run a series called “Who won?” on Mets Trades through the Years.  I have broken all the trades out of the transaction log and will introduce and discuss them for each year.   Each year will be comprised of trades involving major league players made from November 1 through October 31.   Some years will have trades before a season while some years are heavier at the July trade deadline.

Unlike Tom’s older to most recent drafts, I am going to go backwards. 

Year 1:  November 2020 through October 2021.

Also known as Year 1 of the Steve Cohen ownership years.

After Steve Cohen officially bought the Mets on October 31, they did not make any trades in November and December 2020, but pulled off two in January 2021:

(1) New York Mets traded Amed Rosario, Andres Gimenez, Josh Wolf and Isaiah Greene to the Cleveland Indians for Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco.

(2) New York Mets traded Steven Matz to the Toronto Blue Jays for Sean Reid-Foley, Yennsy Diaz, and Josh Winckowski.

The final two pre-season trades in the 2020-21 offseason were both completed in February.

(3) New York Mets traded Federico Polanco to the Miami Marlins for Jordan Yamamoto.

(4) New York Mets traded Josh Winckowski and a PTBNL to the Boston Red Sox for KhalilLee.  Freddy Valdez was sent to Boston on 06/04/2021 to complete the trade

They made four in-season trades in 2021.

(5) New York Mets traded Pedro Quintana to the Milwaukee Brewers for Billy McKinney.

(6) New York Mets traded Billy McKinney to the Los Angeles Dodgers for Carlos Rincon.

(7) New York Mets traded Tommy Hunter and Matt Dyer to the Tampa Bay Rays for Rich Hill

(8) New York Mets traded Pete Crow-Armstrong to the Chicago Cubs for Javier Baez and TrevorWilliams.

So, Who Won with the Trades of 2021?

The big trade for Lindor and Carrsaco is  still an incomplete, and may be for a couple more years.  Obviously neither Lindor nor Carrasco had the type of year everybody wanted in 2021;  Rosario had a solid year in Cleveland, while Gimenez started well and cooled off.    

Outfielder Greene, at age 19, had a very nice (but short) year in Rookie level ball in Arizona.  In just short of 200 plate appearances, he hit .289 with a .421 OBP, with only one home run, but 35 walks against 42 strikesouts.   RHP pitcher Wolf struggled a bit in Low A ball to the tune of 5.35 ERA in 65 innings pitched with a 1.63 WHIP.    

I might tip the scales in the direction of the Mets on the Matz trade.   After 2019 and 2020, he needed a change of scenery.  While Matz had a solid year (2.0 WAR) for Toronto (after which he left for St. Louis in free agency), the Mets got back two relievers who threw some decent innings for the big club and could be back for more.    The third guy was the front part of a package for outfielder Khalil Lee who is in the Mets top 10 prospects list and showed a lot of promise at Syracuse this year, particularly in the last couple months.

 Billy McKinney had some big hits filling in right field when Conforto was out on the injured list, and flipping him for prospect Carlos Rincon was probably a win.   

Tommy Hunter was hurt and was not going to do much for the Mets.  Rich Hill came in and gave them some good innings in those disastrous last couple months of the season.   Matt Dyer is an organizational filler as a catcher/utility guy who had a couple of hot months in about 100 at-bats in Low A after the trade.

Finally,  boy did it hurt to see Crow go.    I am a Baez fan and it hurt to see him go as well.   Obviously Baez had a great second half, but is was not Cespedes-like in taking them to the World Series.   Perhaps Trevor Williams can make this a trade win for the Mets.   Did I mention how much it hurt to see Crow go?

Looking for a lot of comments and opinions.   I think this might be an interesting blast from the past!  

NOTE:   This will not be a sixty part series.   I will go back year by year for a while, until it makes sense to start grouping years (perhaps pretty soon).   I’ll figure it out and probably try to run a couple articles a week and conclude the series to coincide with a new CBA agreement.   Nah . .this series will end first.