Mets Trades through the years: Who won?
Another rather yawner year of trades during the strike year of baseball. This was the first 'full' year of the Joe McIlvaine and Dallas Green regime, one that couldn't end soon enough.
November 1993
through October 1994
(1) New York Mets
traded Dave Gallagher to the Atlanta Braves for Pete Smith (Nov 24, 1993)
(2) New York Mets
traded Marc Kroon and Randy Curtis to the San Diego Padres for Frank Seminara,
Tracy Sanders and Pablo Martinez (Dec
10, 1993)
(3) New York Mets
traded Vince Coleman to the Kansas City Royals for Kevin McReynolds (Jan 05, 1994)
(4) New York Mets
traded Joe Dellicarri to the Detroit Tigers for Kevin Morgan (Feb 18, 1994)
(5) New York Mets
traded Kevin Baez and Tom Wegmann to the Baltimore Orioles for David Segui (Mar 27, 1994)
(6) New York Mets
traded Steve Long to the Florda Marlins for Robert Person (Mar 30, 1994)
(7) New York Mets
traded Anthony Young and Ottis Smith to the Chicago Cubs for Jose Vizcaino (Mar 30, 1994)
(8) New York Mets
traded Alan Zinter to the Detroit Tigers for Rico Brogna (Mar 31, 1994)
Notes: What to
say about this year? There were certainly no star
players traded in 1994.
Kevin McReynolds was a fine player for the powerhouse
mid-to-late 1980s for the the Mets, but bringing him back for 1994 wasn’t the
best move to get to a winning team. But
trading Vince Coleman, who was also past his prime, wasn’t a huge cost.
David Segui was a good get, but they didn’t keep him long.
As seen on an earlier post, Robert Person was a good trade
for the Mets as they were able to flip him to Toronto later for John
Olerud.
Anthony Young, probably the most hard luck pitcher ever
to pitch for the Mets, was finally traded to turn that luck around. You would be hard pressed to find another
player to have a career 5-35 record with one team with an ERA of 3.82 and a
WHIP of 1.367. He was
a better 7 and 10 with the Cubs over a couple years and then an even 3 and 3
with Houston in his final year.
Robert Person, on the other hand had a lifetime record of 51-42 with an ERA of 4.64 and a career WHIP of 1.394. How is that possible?
I cannot be sure, but I suspect Alan Zinter may be the answer
to a good trivia question. “What first
round draft pick that later played in the major leagues took the longest time between
being selected and getting into his first game?” (answer: about 13 years to the day - drafted as the #24 pick in June 1989, debuted on June 18, 2002.)
And like Segui, acquiring Brogna was a good idea, but
they traded him before he had his best years.
Kevin Morgan had about as short of an MLB career as a player can have - one at bat, no hits, 2 innings in the field, one assist, but went on to a long career in the front office of the Mets in various player development and field coordinator roles before moving to Minnesota where he is currently the major league field coordinator.
8 comments:
Any trade that eventually got you John Olerud should be considered a win! That dude could hit! And he saved money on baseball caps, as he always wore his batting helmet.
Nice recap.
Anthony Young played for an under-performing Mets team/offense, and meanwhile, in those same years, the Yanks were dominating. Makes you wonder if Young might have gone, say, 22-18 with the Yanks, instead of his 5-35 Mets stint. The ERA would indicate yes.
McReynolds and Coleman are two more examples of why baseball teams’ thinking that long-term contracts could work might be very faulty thinking indeed.
A lot of Anthony Young's record was just bad luck. I agree that he pitched for bad Mets teams, but winning just 12% of his games with a sub 4 ERA is not right.
His record and arguments that he pitched for bad teams added fodder to my wondering how many players are either (a) in the Hall of Fame or (b) are not in the Hall of Fame because of the teams they played for. I can think of several in both categories including possibly Frank Tanana who came through Shea at the end of a good career with mostly poor teams. Had he pitch for the Dodgers would his record have been good enough? I think so. Conversely, Don Sutton was a very good pitcher, and certainly HOF worthy, but would he be there had he spent his career with the Mariners? I would venture to say that most Hall of Famers played for very good teams. Hmm, maybe this is worth a deeper dive and a full article?
Tom Stevie's gonna test that long term contract thing and I'd still love to know what Lindor did exactly at that lunch to swing that deal.
It's also quite a world we live in that a 23 year old turns down a 350 million dollar deal. Stay healthy man.
I'm holding out for a one game, $350 contract. Boras will bet a third. But I won't owe taxes on it.
Funny, I usually skip right past most of these guys, but I saw Marc Kroon and thought "who's Marc Kroon?"
Turns out he had a wild career: 7-19 from 1991-93 in the Mets minors, then 19-11 the next two seasons in San Diego's minors, then pithched well for their minors in relief one season, not bad in the minors the next, 37 saves in those two seasons, stunk briefly in the majors in 1998, barely pitched in 1999 and 2000, missed the next 2 seasons altogether, 2003 in the minors, 2004 he pitches 7 innings for Colorado and walks 10, then....nothing...until 7 years later he shows up again in AAA in relief at age 38, a full 21 years after his career started.
That missing 7 seasons? He was a very effective reliever in Japan - 177 saves, 2.66 ERA.
His MLB career? 0-2. ERA over 7. I admire this guy for sticking with it.
I missed that one...I have been looking at a lot of the ones I had either not heard of or forgotten about..some shot careers, some longer ones in the minors
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