Reese Kaplan -- Well, You All Wanted a Trade to Happen...

As Mets fans we’re never satisfied with the transactions made by the front office.  They went too far or they didn’t go far enough.  They mortgaged the future and they are taking their chances on short term rentals who will leave or bankrupt the team’s payroll to try to keep them around.   

Well, in the midst of the back and forth on the acquisition of Javy Baez from the apparently AAAA team on the north side of Chicago who have committed the ultimate purge and destroy campaign to set them back for several years, the Mets fans can’t really complain that Zack Scott did nothing.  With the oblique injury to Francisco Lindor needing probably another month or so to heal, they went out and got a major RBI bat in Baez who also can deliver Gold Glove caliber defense.  That’s a nice way to help the ballclub address one of its fundamental needs.

Now to make this deal the Mets had to give up a crown jewel of their minor league system, youngster Pete Crow-Armstrong who is most definitely a highly regarded future major leaguer who was taken in the first round in 2020.  How good he will or won’t be has to do with both his natural progression up the ladder as well as his ability to recover from the shoulder surgery that terminated his rookie minor league season quite early.  He was a stiff price to pay, but in a way it was a better one than giving up one of the few minor league arms who might someday help win some games like J.T. Ginn.  

Lost somewhat in this deal was the other player the Mets obtained, pitcher Trevor Williams.  Unlike Baez, he’s essentially a longer term solution who is under contract for the end of this year and for 2022, not hitting free agency until 2023.  On the surface that sounds pretty good until you start to dig a bit into the numbers.  

For nearly his entire career Williams has been a starting pitcher for both the Pittsburgh Pirates and later the Chicago Cubs.  The crown jewel of his pitching was the 2018 season for the Bucs during which he managed to finish with a 14-10 record, a very nice 3.11 ERA and kept runners off base.  For a big guy (6’3” and 235 pounds) he’s not a strikeout artist.  In that very fine season he only averaged 6.6 strikeouts per 9 IP.  

If you look at the rest of his major league numbers, it would seem when the K’s go up, the rest of his game tends to falter.  This season, for example, he’s fanning better than 1 per inning, yet his record is just 4-2 with an unsightly 5.06 ERA over a dozen starts.  That level of pitching is more typical of what to expect from him, with a 162 game average of 11-12 with a 4.48 ERA and more hits than innings pitched.  

Although the Mets are fully staffed on the mound with Carlos Carrasco, Marcus Stroman, Tylor Megill, Rich Hill and Taijuan Walker, it’s the latter who is a heavy concern for the team having gone three straight awful post-All Star appearances.  Some say it’s a matter of fatigue given how little he’s pitched over the past few years.  Others think it’s the league adjusting to him despite the pre-All Star 2.50 ERA.   Having a Trevor Williams as a spare starting pitcher may help give the club the option to sit Walker for some rest and recovery time. 

On the same day the Mets executed this deal they also learned that Jacob deGrom will be shut down for several weeks after experiencing more pain.  While none of these pitchers will replace a two-time Cy Young Award winner, the fact is that they are skating on much thinner ice pitching-wise than they were a few days ago when everyone thought deGrom would be back in early August.  Like Rich Hill before him, Trevor Williams is an inexpensive and healthy $2.5 million pitcher who might not get folks excited, but he’s certainly better than the scrap heap picks the club has in Syracuse to start ballgames.  

So overall if you ask me whether or not the Mets paid too little or too much to get both Baez and Williams to Citifield, I’d have to swallow hard and say that the price was probably just right.  The Mets had needs that had to be addressed and while you could argue all day long about other packages bandied about such as Trevor Story and Jon Gray, they got pieces who should help reinforce the team while giving up a very young and unproven player.  Pete Crow-Armstrong could turn out to be the second coming of Curtis Granderson or he could become the next Matt den Dekker.  Regardless of how his future turns out, you have to give to get.  I’d give Zack Scott a B+ for this move.  That’s well above average.