Remember 1969: Who Won? Deals of History - 1987

 

Mets Trades through the years:  Who won?

This was the first winter after their last championship season.  

November 1986 through October 1987

 Notes: A knee-jerk reaction to these trades is that the Mets won the year, but I'm sure are fans out there - probably some of you - that will argue that trading Mitchell for McReynolds was not a win.    Mitchell did have a couple of very good years with the Giants, but McReynolds was just a very solid player for the Mets for several years and actually finished with a higher career WAR than Mitchell.  

The trade for David Cone was one of the top trades in Mets history.  He was a terrific pitcher until his trade to Toronto in 1992. 

All 1986-7 trades: 

(1)  New York Mets traded Ron Gardenhire to the Minnesota Twins for Donnie Iasparro  (Nov 12, 1986)

(2)  New York Mets traded Kevin Mitchell, Stan Jefferson and Shawn Abner to the San Diego Padres for Kevin McReynolds, Gene Walter and Adam Ging  (Dec 11, 1986)

(3)  New York Mets traded Ed Hearn, Rick Anderson and Mauro Gozzo to the Kansas City Royals for David Cone and Chris Jelic  (Mar 27, 1987)

(4)  New York Mets traded Jason Felice to the Minnesota Twins for Bill Latham  (May 10, 1987)

(5)  New York Mets traded Ricky Nelson to the Cleveland Indians for Don Schulze  (May 11, 1987)

(6)  New York Mets traded Al Pedrique and Scott Little to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Bill Almon  (May 29, 1987)

(7) New York Mets traded Shane Young and Jeff Richardson to the California Angels for John Candelaria  (Sep 15, 1987)

Trivia:    I did not uncover any interesting facts in the time I took to look through these players, but if you are looking for a collection of players that had very little playing time in the Majors and whose WAR was 0 or less, look no further than this year.    Jeff Richardson pitched in one game in the majors, facing two batters, getting just one out (0.1 innings) while giving up one hit.  That is an ERA of 0.00, a WHIP of 3.0 and a WAR of 0.00