Tom Brennan - All Time Ex-Met Team: The Ones That Got Away

Some player departure mistakes are doozies!

Everybody likes to talk about this bad Mets trade or that bad Mets trade, or that the Mets stupidly let a real talent just up and leave upon reaching free agency.

What about the hypothetical team that one could compile from players they've let get away, either via trade or free agency?

I will leave out trades where the Mets got equal or greater value back.  For example, Rusty Staub for Ken Singleton - both did very well after that trade.

SP - Tom Seaver - he was 75-46 with the Reds after being traded to them in a lopsided deal.  David Rubin never forgave them for it.  113 of Seaver's career 311 wins came with other teams, so he wan't even a 200 game winner with the Mets.  (No one else has, either). Of course, with decent offensive support, he would have won far more than 200 as a Met.

SP - David Cone - Coney was 111-75 after his Mets' tenure.  He did get traded for Jeff Kent, who actually had a better post-trade career than Cone, but alas, the Mets let him go in a bad subsequent trade.

SP - Nolan Ryan - 29-38 as a Met.  If he had never pitched for the Mets, he still accomplished enough afterwards to easily make the Hall of Fame.  The Mets traded him for Jim Fregosi, who had 526 plate appearances as a Met, and went .233/.319/.328 with a paltry 43 RBIs.  In 8 straight years, except the one just prior to the trade, Fregosi garnered some votes for MVP. But he declined in his last year as an Angel, the Mets missed the flashing warning sign, and Fregosi stayed declined.  The Mets?  They should have declined, too.

SP - Doc Gooden - the most amazing career start of all time faded, but he was still 48-37 as a post-Met.

SP - Zack Wheeler - 18-12, 2.80, with 300 Ks in 284 IP post-Mets.  His record would be better as a Phil, were it not for their putrid bullpen.  Wilpons went cheap again and let him walk at free agency.  Dummies.

SP Mike Scott - after stinking at 14-27 as a Met, he was traded to Houston, and the Scuff Meister went 110-81 there.  The Mets got Danny Heep in return, so Houston did a heap better.

BP - Tug McGraw - 49-27, 3.10 ERA, 94 saves with the Phillies post-Mets.  The Mets did get a decent catcher in John Stearns and Del Unser, but came up short in the deal nonetheless.

BP - Jeff Reardon - traded for a fading Ellis Valentine, Jeff had 58 wins and 357 saves as an ex-Met.  Nicknamed the Terminator, the Mets should have terminated that deal before it was made. Arnold agrees.

BP - Jason Isringhauen - Mets got fading Billy Taylor.  OUCH! 292 of Izzy's 300 career saves were with subsequent teams.

BP - Ollie Perez - Ollie was 25-17 his first two Mets' seasons, then was 3-9, 6.81 in his last two Mets' seasons, and essentially got roundly booed out of town.  The boo birds built a nest in his head and took up residence.

His control as a Met was bad, but after he left, despite his career to that point being mostly a starter, he never started another game, relieving in 490 games post-Mets, spanning 9 seasons, and his post-Mets ERA was well under 4.00 and his control improved.   Not a dominant pen piece, but a valuable one.  And - his career strikeouts per 9 innings were higher than fellow lefty Sandy Koufax.  My nickname for him was Ollie Koufax.  Just sayin'. 

C - Travis d'Arnaud - given up on just as he was getting healthy, he has, in 702 recent ABs as an ex-Met, hit lustily, having compiled 38 doubles, 32 HRs, and a whopping127 RBIs.  

By comparison, Mets' catchers in 2021 had 557 ABs, hit .210 with 17 doubles, 10 HRs, and a mere 50 RBIs.    Otherwise, the Mets have had incredibly little home-grown catcher talent throughout their 60 year history.  When they traded away Todd Hundley, they got back good value in his place, so he is not part of this article.

1B - John Olerud - .315/.425/.501 as a 3 year Met-acquired free agent - but the dopes let him leave for free agency, where he had some fine years with Seattle and won 3 Gold Gloves....runner-up: Dave Kingman, acquired by the Mets for a mere $150K, he provided a game filled with some holes and an odd personality to some, but also provided awesome power.  

The Mets dumped him for Bobby V and Paul Siebert, and Kingman went on to hit over 200 homers with post-Mets teams during years when the Mets found team HRs mighty hard to come by.

2B - Daniel Murphy - I gag every time I think of him leaving in free agency to the arch-rival Nats.  If I were the GM, without a doubt, I would have signed Murphy and traded Duda and put Murph at 1B.  I implored that in articles at the time.  Guess the Wilpons and Sandy couldn't read.  Shame - it might have cost the Mets big time in 2016 and 2017.

SS - Jose Reyes - not sure he ever earned his post-Mets salary, and he finally made his way back to them, but only foolish Wilpon cheapness let him go in order to install the cheaper, inferior Ruben Tejada at 1B.

LF - Kevin Mitchell - dude won an MVP after he was traded.  What else to say?  No Met hitter has ever won an MVP.  The Mets did get Kevin McReynolds, so the trade was not too lopsided.

CF - Amos Otis - Traded for Joe Foy?  Oh, boy.  Post-Mets, Otis was great - over 1,000 RBIs, over 300 steals, 3 GG's, 4 years in the top 10 in MVP voting.  Foy got in 99 games as a Met, and while he had a .373 OBP, he also had just a .329 slug %.  Doozy of a disaster trade.  Imagine if the Mets had drafted Reggie Jackson and kept Amos Otis and Nolan Ryan...how do you spell dynasty?

RF - Darryl Strawberry - struggled with injuries and personal issues post-Mets, but still put up decent numbers for a few years.  Who knows what might have happened if he stayed.

OF - Len Dykstra - traded for (gasp!) Juan Samuel, Nails was a 4 time All Star post-Mets, and had a monster 1992 season, in which he scored 143 runs, walked 129 times, had 37 steals and 69 extra base hits, and almost won the MVP title.

Note: Carlos Beltran was traded by the Mets, too, but Zack Wheeler came back in return.  While Beltran was better than Zack so far post-trade, Zack may ultimately prove as valuable a major leaguer in the long run as post-Mets Beltran.

As always, I imagine I've overlooked someone of real significance.

That collection of departed talent that was traded for bupkis, or was just allowed to walk away, as of the year after they left the Mets, would be an outstanding team to watch and an extraordinarily hard team to beat, wouldn't you say?

The ones that got away - thankfully, that now includes the Wilpons.

P.S.  OK, Eric Adams, you're a tough guy, you're the honcho, then man-in-charge...but wisdom says that if players aren't vaxxed, and they're playing OUTDOORS as the virus in on low ebb, insisting on vax or no play is just...plain...stupid.

Kyrie Irving can only play on the road because his Nets home games are in NYC.  Kyrie was SO SICK....he scored SIXTY POINTS last night.  Imagine if he was vaxxed?  300 points, easy. No...the vaccinated were also getting COVID, and the transmission rate is down 99% from early January.  C'mon, man, lift the ban.  Don't be an also-ran.

Mr. Adams, sir, it is TIME to join the real world - lift the ban....ASAP.  Anyone doesn't like it, they can stay home and suck down some beers (as long as they re-mask between gulps) as they watch the Mets.  

If you hobble the Mets' 2022 season with idiocy, sir, your party will be crushed even worse in November.  Be pragmatic...not phlegmatic.  Less polemic about pandemic.  Play ball, and leave the Ban in the deodorant section in Rite Aid.