Add Juan Pierre to the list of players, who won’t be making their way to the Mets next season.
SI’s Jon Heyman is reporting that the Dodgers have traded the speedy outfielder to the Chicago White Sox in exchange for two minor league pitchers.
The Dodgers will reportedly pick up $10 million of the remaining $18.5 million remaining on Pierre’s contract.
Last y
ear, Pierre was great during his time in Los Angeles filling in for superstar slugger, Manny Ramirez. In 380 at-bats last year, Pierre hit .308 with no home runs and 31 RBIs.
There was much speculation going around earlier in the off-season about the Mets swapping second baseman, Luis Castillo, in exchange for Pierre; however it is clear that the trade will no longer happen.
Part of me wishes that the Mets could have found a way to acquire Pierre, because I think it would have killed two birds with one stone, so to speak.
One one hand the Mets would have gotten a solid outfielder for the bench to replace Jeremy Reed, whom they non-tendered and they would have cleared the path for a new second baseman.
To be fair though the team has many greater needs than a fourth outfielder and a new second baseman.
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Phil, your last sentence was the best observation. I don’t know what it is with Mets fans. Every time a player signs or gets traded to another team we blew it and should have gotten him. Perhaps the organization decided they don’t need an expensive, aging bench warmer who is a dime a dozen. We bemoan signing Alex Cora and then we urge them to sign guys like this? We can’t have it both ways.
The only thing I would ask the Mets to do with this trade is to see how it is done. The Dodgers are paying over 50% of the contract. In order to get rid of the guy they had to pay a good chunk of it.
If the Mets truly wanted to trade Castillo to a team that was semi-interested, the Mets would offer to take a chunk of the salary. Then you could get maybe a few minor leaguers like was done in this deal.
See Mets? See how you do it? Although if Castillo performs like he did last year I don’t see that much of an issue. As you said, there are far greater issues that need to be addressed than a new second basemen.
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