September 11, 2007

The Good Outweighs The Bad

With the slight of hand and a spark of his charisma, General Manager Omar Minaya has changed the Mets almost seemingly over night. Now, although some of hiss trades haven’t looked pretty up front, his hart is definitely in the right place. Unlike the General Manager’s of the past, Omar has rarely ever gone for the easy fix and traded away the farm system for a big name. In fact, he has become sort of a savant for seeing talent where no one else, including the team with the player, does.

In the 2005 off season Omar Minaya went ahead and traded away Kris Benson to Baltimore for reliever Jorge Julio and minor league pitcher John Maine. Now let’s not forget that before the 2004 season the Mets traded Jason Bay to the Pirates to obtain Benson, but that didn’t stop Omar from shipping Kris and his wife for a washed up closer and a nobody pitcher.

Most of the fans cringed at the sight of seeing the Mets third starter depart for Julio, but as many didn’t know, there was an underlining purpose to this deal.

After rebuilding Julio’s image to an almost dependable set up man, he was spun half way through the 2006 season for Orlando Hernandez. The Diamondbacks were glad to make the deal, because El Duque was showing them that he had finally lived out his baseball career, or at least that’s what they thought anyway. El Duque came back to New York, this time to Queens, and showed why he was once a dominant starter.

A month later the second part of Omar’s deal with the Orioles came into the picture and started showing the Mets fans why Omar was so willing to give up Kris Benson. John Maine went on to have his best showing in the Majors and with injuries to Pedro Martinez and Orlando Hernandez, wound up starting game one of the NLDS for the Mets.

So, when we sit back and look at the Brian Bannister deal and start to call for heads, just remember that Omar Minaya can’t bat 1.000 all of the time and that the good he has done for this team sorely outweighs the bad.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

who is doubting Omar?

Anonymous said...

there are always those fans that will doubt anyone, no matter how much he does for the mets

Anonymous said...

bannister still could have been a good pitcher for the mets and now we're stuck with a guy who wont pitch for another year

Anonymous said...

he's not scott kasmire. how was omar to know that bannister would turn out like he did

Anonymous said...

besides its not like bannister had anypressure in kc

Anonymous said...

true

Anonymous said...

?? I would hope you have a better history of the Mets then this, Bay was traded to the Padres in '02. Ty Wigginton was traded to the Pirates for Benson. Geesh.