November 1980 through October 1981
Trading for Randy Jones netted them a former Cy Young award winner, and a guy that would deliver an 8-18 record with a 4.7 ERA in two years with the Mets. Disappointing at best.
Bruce Bochy's better days were ahead as a manager, although if he had a full playing career equalling the offensive output he gave the Mets, he would have been an All-Star player.
Kingman returned to the Mets and forgot how to hit again following a couple of very good years in Chicago. To be fair, he did hit 37 homers in 1982, albeit with a .204 batting average.
Finally, trading Jeff Reardon for Ellis Valentine must have seemed like a good idea at the time to somebody, but it didn't work out for the Mets. A little more research on his career might be interesting. He had a great start in Montreal, accumulating 16.8 WAR by the time he was 26 when he was traded to the Mets. Unfortunately, he only was able to gain another 0.3 WAR and was out of baseball by age 30.
The 1980-81 trade list:
(1) New York Mets
traded Roy Lee Jackson to the Toronto Blue Jays for Bob Bailor (Dec 12, 1980)
(2) New York Mets traded John Pacella and Jose Moreno to the San Diego Padres for Randy Jones (Dec 15, 1980)
(3) New York Mets traded Stan Hough and Randy Rogers to the Houston Astros for Bruce Bochy (Feb 11, 1981)
(4) New York Mets traded Steve Henderson to the Chicago Cubs for Dave Kingman (Feb 28, 1981)
(5) New York Mets traded Juan Berenguer to the Kansas City Royals for Marvell Wynne and John Skinner (Mar 31, 1981)
(6) New York Mets traded John Csefalvay to the Houston Astros for Gary Rajsich (Apr 03, 1981)
(7) New York Mets traded Ed Glynn to the Cleveland Indians for Matt Bullinger (Apr 06, 1981)
(8) New York Mets traded Mark Bomback to the Toronto Blue Jays for Charlie Puleo (Apr 06, 1981)
(9) New York Mets traded Dan Norman and Jeff Reardon to the Montreal Expos for Ellis Valentine (May 29, 1981)
Trivia: Steve Henderson had a tough job coming to New York in the trade that sent Tom Seaver to the Reds, but he gained 9.4 of his career 11.5 WAR while playing four years with the Mets. Also interesting, by coming to the Mets in the Seaver trade, Henderson joined the club a few minutes before they traded Dave Kingman to the Padres in the other famous June 15, 1977 trade and he was part of the team until he was traded for Kingman 3 and a half years later.
Bob Bailor scarfed up 8.9 WAR for his career .636 OPS. He had good defensive metrics, but somehow I scratch my head a bit when he was almost 12 WAR better than Marvell Wynne.
2 comments:
I thought that giving up Jeff Reardon was a loss. He ended up accumulating 367 saves and had a 1.2 WHIP in a 16 year career. As usual, he was a young guy with the Mets that didn't star right away, so they gave up Jeff for a guy (Valentine) at the tail end of his career.
The sad part of the 'tail end of his career' with Valentine is that at the time of the trade to the Mets he was two months short of his 27th birthday, generally thought of to the prime year.
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