Two Years Later the Mets are Decisive Losers in Wagner Trade

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• Clayton Collier June 17, 2011 at 3:36 pm

  I’ve thought of this on many occasions. It was a bad trade for sure. Minaya felt he had to deal him, which wasn’t the case.

  Nice article.
  • t agee June 17, 2011 at 4:05 pm

    This was the last straw for me. After this “trade” I had finally had it. Imagine, for a team that has gone decades between producing a good LFer, RFer, catcher, starting pitchers, closer and had to over pay so many freaks through the years to just throw away 2 high draft choices on players the Red Sox were going to expose to the rule 5 draft (Carter) or didn’t even want (Lora) is in******excusable.

    Spend millions on overpaid under performing and frequently injured shells of their former selves and then save a couple of pennies by giving away TWO high draft choices so we can continue to have 8-15 weak spots on the 25 every year.

    This trade is just proof positive that the big splashy backpage every January is just for show. Simply a way to create a box office buzz and get those season tickets rolling. If the Wilpon would just concentrate his focus on BUILDING a real team they would have had SRO for a freakin decade by now.

    What a bunch of shortsighted morons actually going out of their way to sabotage the future.
    • Kranepool7 June 17, 2011 at 4:09 pm

      Great comment t agee, I can always count on your comments to bring the point home!
      • t agee June 17, 2011 at 4:28 pm

        Thanks Krane. And if that’s not enough look at what the Red Sox got for “losing” Bay. Bryce Brentz before his mid year promotion to A+ was hitting .359/.414/.643 for a 1.061 OPS with 10 doubles 3 triples and 11 HR’s in a half a year in the Sally League and Brandon Workman with a 4-1 K/BB ratio in the Sally League and a mid season promotion to A+.

        Like we couldn’t use an outfielder or a starting pitcher or closer in 2013-2020.
    • Luis June 17, 2011 at 4:31 pm

      You nailed it!
    • METS62FAN June 18, 2011 at 10:05 am

      T, at what point do u need to get smacked in the head by a dead stinky fish to reach the conclusion that the Wilpons who have made their financial bones developing real eastate are clueless to the sinmilarities of baseball where development is such an integral component to success. Only these past 6 yrs(since Phillips’ firing) have thay finally seemed to Get it, perhaps only becuase they are so indentured to Selig as to be forced to comply with his small market improvement scheme of modest draft investments and farm development by hiring his handpicked pilot for their Wheelhouse steering. The announcement that 12 draft picks are already signed, sealed & delivered by mid June is clearlty an indication of a momentus shhift in emphasis.

      This posting is a tad disengenuous as it makes no mention of the actual millions saved by dumping a contract we had little use for and had proven over too many scenerios could/would not be able to maximize.
      This is no more enlightening than a rehash of the Kazmir debacle manipulated by Petrerson aka “THE PITCHING GM” (IN MY ESTIMATION THE THIRD WORST DEAL IN NYM HISTORY)
      #1 SEAVER SACRIFICE
      #2 RYAN+2 PROSPECTS FOR FRIG OSI
      #3 KAZMIR FOR 10MIN FIXER-UPPER

      There are a number of honorable mention, pet peevers that could be nominees; but I trust these 3 are srguably on EVERY METFAN’S LIST OF WORST NIGHTMARES.

      With Minaya gone & Wagner deal barely registering on the Flushing horrible deal scales.
      I must ask, why cite it at all! old bad news, don’t we have more important legitimate current bad news to consider?
      • t agee June 18, 2011 at 10:57 am

        ’62, I’m well aware the Wilpon is clueless to developing prospects and they didn’t save millions in salary. Wagner was traded in Sept. The salary dump was only 1.5 M. The real savings came in not having to pay two signing bonuses. Even the cheapo type the Wilpon usually goes for. For all the Wilpon knew those two picks could have been #39 and #65. We’re not talking about a huge amount of money here. At the time of the trade those bonuses could have been anywhere from 1.5 M down to 500 G. 3M tops. for two of the best amateur players in the nation.

        When you evaluate the thought process behind the various trades we’ve blundered into this one is even worse than the others.

        Seaver and Grant had a deep and mutual dislike for each other that included using the media to leak dirty stories about each other. Sooner or later one of them was going to go and unfortunately for us the bad guy won. But the trade was understandable in light of the circumstances.

        Ryan asked for a trade. Had not yet established himself as anything more than a potential big time arm and his wife was reportdedly being stalked while he was on road trips and away on military leave. Horrible trade. One of the worst of all time, but at least you can understand how it came to be.

        The thought process on Kazmir – Zambranno is also easy to understand. New interim GM looking to make his bones and new Met COO Jeff Wilpon looking to do the same. Egged on by the professional they hired for his expertise in the matter who really really led them astray. It was really the desire to become a full fledged GM by one of them and to be relevant period by the other. Peterson didn’t like Kazmir and maybe he saw a little of what was to come down the pike. I wonder what would they have done if we had taken Cole Hamels instead of Kazmir.

        Strictly from a thought process standpoint the Wagner deal defies any kind of understanding. The Wilpon loses a 35 year old making 18 M a year, a 35 year old making 10 M a year, a 26 year old making 6 M a year and a 30 year old making 20 M a year to injury. The backups that were provided by enlarge are really really bad and some positions had no one. AAA Buffalo is completely and totally devoid of any talent whatsoever. So naturally you turn your nose up at 2 top shelf talented amateurs in order to save a couple of Million. What kind of sense does that make? Selling the potential parts that would improve the product because you spent so much money on Castillo, Perez and guys that got hurt. Incredible. Selling corporate assets in order to ensure we’ll either remain bad or have to forfeit more picks and spend more money like we did the next season with Bay.

        I know that you will seek to understand the Wilpon’s feelings rather than condemn him for being a stupid jackass ’62. But I have ****** had it with this buffoon act. I would like to someday see a consistent winner year after year on the field, not a team that wins a Division title once every 23 years even while having the largest payroll in the entire league.

        When you seek to put a bad signing of a FA into perspective you always use the phrase “well who else were we going to get to play _________?” Well this is the reason we have to sign so many freaks. Because we give away our draft picks like they were candy at halloween and then draft the cheapest players possible when we do keep them.

        Anyone interested in someday having a competitive team year in and year out would demand that we start cheaping out on the 25 and putting our money into the draft and IFA market and start developing our own players who will be here in their prime for 6-10 years, play their best ball in our uniform and maybe even leave behind a draft choice or two after some great years as a Met so we can get another prospect or two who may do the same.

        Seeking to understand sabotaging the team is useless. Demanding change and supporting the turnaround time 13 consecutive years of never looking ahead unless it was to rob from the future is what’s neccessary unless you to are satisfied with one NL East title over the last 23 years.

        Sometimes I really wonder if the Steinbrenner’s really bought the Mets and hired the Wilpon’s to sabotage us.
• Jimmy June 17, 2011 at 5:00 pm

  Omar is NOT to blame here. Blame the owners. They were the ones who wanted Wagner moved in order to save money. It’s that simple.
  • t agee June 17, 2011 at 5:39 pm

    No disagreement from me on this one. The Wilpon shot the load on 2009 and busted, then decided to save a couple of nickels. Come ticket selling time they looked around (as usual) to see which soon to be in decline FA just might be available that they could lavish big bucks on again to sucker in the fans and settled on Bay. and they busted again.

    Snakebit? Not really. Just incredibly stupid and reckless in their decision making.
• Little Nicky June 17, 2011 at 11:37 pm

  I hated this deal from the moment it went down. It stunk to high heaven!
• Alan June 18, 2011 at 10:27 am

  I hate to disagree but the whole idea was to dump salary and especially since Wagner was close to 40 years old and had undergone a surgery that had no guarantees. I did love Billy Wagner too but I think that part of the deal was not trading Billy to a National league team as in the Phillies…Marlins…or Braves!

  It has no bearing on us as to what the Red Sox did later on and we helped give a good guy like Wagner another shot at the playoffs!

  Wags was a good soldier for us!

  Let it go guys!
• Bill June 23, 2011 at 6:27 pm

  If Carter is thriving with the Rays this year, why did they release him a few days ago? In fact, the A’s signed him for AAA and called him up for the game today. And he made an error at first base.