RIP Young Lastings
It's amazing how quickly things can change in baseball. One year the Chicago White Sox are world champions, two years later they're a 90-loss team.
In the offseason before 2006, a package centering on Lastings Milledge could have netted Manny Ramirez, or so we were told. After 2007, Milledge instead netted Ryan Church and Brian Schneider.
Young Lastings, all 22 years of him, hit .272 with 7 home runs in 184 at-bats last season. Across 550 at-bats, that's 21 home runs -- pretty good for a 22-year-old, particularly one like Lastings who clearly needs to fill out.
Was Lastings ready to be our starting right fielder in 2008? I think he probably needed more seasoning, but I certainly think that if necessary he could have handled the full time job.
Was he made expendable by the development of Carlos Gomez and the promise of Fernando Martinez? Absolutely. But I don't think it's the fact of trading Lastings Milledge that bothers so many people.
What bothers everyone is that once again it appears that the Mets got the bum end of a deal involving one of our top prospects, an unnecessary deal at that. It's not a redux of the Scott Kazmir disaster, but is Ryan Church and Brian Schneider really top value?
Several elements likely diluted Milledge's value. Chief among them is the glut of center fielders available on the open market. Torii Hunter's gone (filling the Angels' need), but Aaron Rowand and Andruw Jones are still available.
Beyond that, it's possible, likely even, that Mets fans valued Milledge more than other teams did. For us, he was always the former first round draft pick. The guy with the quickest hands this side of Gary Sheffield. The guy with 5 tools.
To other teams? I don't know; maybe he was just another guy with a lot of potential, a rap label and a sexual misconduct charge to his name.
But leave all that aside, why did we trade him for anything but pitching? I mean, between Ramon Castro and Johnny Estrada, we are kind of set at catcher. And with Lastings, Gomez, Endy, etc. we were kind of set in right field.
I'm willing to believe Milledge wouldn't have gotten us the ace pitcher we so desperately need, but I have two follow up questions in the wake of this trade. One: are you, Mets front office, trying to tell us he couldn't have gotten us a solid arm for the bullpen? As much as we covet an ace, wasn't the bullpen an equal part of the team's undoing last year?
Two: so if Milledge couldn't net an ace but Carlos Gomez can, say we trade Gomez, then what options are we left with internally when Moises Alou goes down for 50 games or Beltran for 20? This shit happens every year, we can't afford to be soft in those areas.
It's just a really puzzling trade.
Wall Street guys like to talk about earning "alpha" -- above-benchmark returns on each deal. Does anyone among us feel like we got alpha in this deal? I don't think it's possible to have that opinion, quite honestly.
And so it's just kind of an empty feeling. You look at this Mets team right now and you see a club that's best chance was 2006, not 2008. That being the case, why are we trading young, affordable players with upside (Brother Lastings) for mid-career known quantities (Church and Schneider) who are fine but not great?
It just doesn't make sense, and it just kind of sucks.
Nothing we can do about it now though. RIP Young Lastings. I was really looking forward to watching you play next year.
- A.F.O.M.G.
In the offseason before 2006, a package centering on Lastings Milledge could have netted Manny Ramirez, or so we were told. After 2007, Milledge instead netted Ryan Church and Brian Schneider.
Young Lastings, all 22 years of him, hit .272 with 7 home runs in 184 at-bats last season. Across 550 at-bats, that's 21 home runs -- pretty good for a 22-year-old, particularly one like Lastings who clearly needs to fill out.Was Lastings ready to be our starting right fielder in 2008? I think he probably needed more seasoning, but I certainly think that if necessary he could have handled the full time job.
Was he made expendable by the development of Carlos Gomez and the promise of Fernando Martinez? Absolutely. But I don't think it's the fact of trading Lastings Milledge that bothers so many people.
What bothers everyone is that once again it appears that the Mets got the bum end of a deal involving one of our top prospects, an unnecessary deal at that. It's not a redux of the Scott Kazmir disaster, but is Ryan Church and Brian Schneider really top value?
Several elements likely diluted Milledge's value. Chief among them is the glut of center fielders available on the open market. Torii Hunter's gone (filling the Angels' need), but Aaron Rowand and Andruw Jones are still available.
Beyond that, it's possible, likely even, that Mets fans valued Milledge more than other teams did. For us, he was always the former first round draft pick. The guy with the quickest hands this side of Gary Sheffield. The guy with 5 tools.
To other teams? I don't know; maybe he was just another guy with a lot of potential, a rap label and a sexual misconduct charge to his name.
But leave all that aside, why did we trade him for anything but pitching? I mean, between Ramon Castro and Johnny Estrada, we are kind of set at catcher. And with Lastings, Gomez, Endy, etc. we were kind of set in right field.
I'm willing to believe Milledge wouldn't have gotten us the ace pitcher we so desperately need, but I have two follow up questions in the wake of this trade. One: are you, Mets front office, trying to tell us he couldn't have gotten us a solid arm for the bullpen? As much as we covet an ace, wasn't the bullpen an equal part of the team's undoing last year?
Two: so if Milledge couldn't net an ace but Carlos Gomez can, say we trade Gomez, then what options are we left with internally when Moises Alou goes down for 50 games or Beltran for 20? This shit happens every year, we can't afford to be soft in those areas.It's just a really puzzling trade.
Wall Street guys like to talk about earning "alpha" -- above-benchmark returns on each deal. Does anyone among us feel like we got alpha in this deal? I don't think it's possible to have that opinion, quite honestly.
And so it's just kind of an empty feeling. You look at this Mets team right now and you see a club that's best chance was 2006, not 2008. That being the case, why are we trading young, affordable players with upside (Brother Lastings) for mid-career known quantities (Church and Schneider) who are fine but not great?
It just doesn't make sense, and it just kind of sucks.
Nothing we can do about it now though. RIP Young Lastings. I was really looking forward to watching you play next year.
- A.F.O.M.G.
posted by A Friend of Mr. Glass' at 6:50 PM
3 Comments:
This post has been removed by the author.
I keep saying how I'd be cool with this deal had we gotten Jon Rauch out of it as well. Pretty clear that we weren't going to get Cordero without offering something else, but Milledge should have been able to get us a middle reliever in addition to Church and Schneider. 3 solid big-leaguers for a devalued prospect wouldn't have been a bad haul.
The most frustrating part about this whole thing is how much more creative Omar Minaya could have been, and wasn't.
http://trackpower.blogspot.com
Agreed. It's the type of deal that would have been on the table at any point. Why you have to rush to pull a completely fungible deal, before you see how the CF or trade market pans out, is completely beyond me.
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