On Friday, the Mets announced that they traded first baseman Ike Davis to the Pittsburgh Pirates for righthanded reliever Zack Thornton and a player to be named later.
Thornton, who turns 26 next month, was a 23rd round pick of the Oakland A’s in the 2010 draft, who was traded to the Pirates in 2012 for RHP Chris Resop.
He has a solid strikeout rate, induces a lot of groundballs, and throws a fastball which sits in the 90-93 mph range.
Sandy Alderson said he considered selecting Thornton in the Rule 5 Draft in December, but he went unselected.
For now he’s been assigned to Triple-A Las Vegas, but we could see him sooner rather than later in the Mets bullpen. Thornton was 2-0 with a 1.23 ERA in four games with Indianapolis (AAA) of the International League this season.
In regards to the player to be named later, there’s plenty of wild speculation running rampant ranging from the Mets getting someone “as good or better than Thornton” to the Mets getting someone “fairly significant.”
That second and more appealing scenario, has some bloggers and Twitter folks believing the Mets may be getting Austin Meadows, who was the ninth overall pick in the 2013 draft for the Pirates. To put Meadows in some more context, he was selected ahead of our top pick in the same draft, first baseman Dominic Smith.
My question is this… Why would the Pirates GM trade someone of that caliber for a player who they only intend to use in a first base platoon?
We may not know who the PTBNL is for another two days, two weeks or two months. So why don’t we just wait and see what happens rather than drumming up these wild and unrealistic scenarios that may be so far removed from the truth you could drive a truck through it?
Here’s what we do know.
- We got a 26-year old reliever who could be useful, for what was currently a bench player for the Mets that could also be useful for the Pirates.
- Lucas Duda is now the undisputed starting first baseman for the New York Mets. Hopefully, this gives Duda the confidence to have a solid season for us moving forward, and that he can realize his full offensive potential.
- The Mets payroll now stands at about $84 million or approximately $10 million less than iast season.
Those are the facts.
