Will The Milledge Trade Come Back to Haunt Us?

The first post at my brand new blog: www.metsbullpen.com which is going to be a Shea Nation Network blog.

When Omar Minaya came to the New York Mets, I wiped the sweat off my forehead, and told myself: thank god, hopefully we will never have the Scott Kazmir trade anymore. Well, I might have gone too far ahead of myself. Omar Minaya may have just made a mistake that will come back to haunt the New York Mets.

When I first saw that Lastings Milledge, who was one of the top prospects in baseball last year, was traded to the Washington Nationals, for 2 mediocre players, two players popped up in my head: Scott Kazmir and Victor Zambrano. Obviously, this was not a good sign, as many Mets fans have feared that the already 1 time all-star, Scott Kazmir, who was traded to the Devil Rays a few gloomy years ago, may be a curse to the Mets in the future.

The trade was wrong. Getting Brian Schneider and Ryan Chuch in exchange for arguably the most exciting prospect the Mets have had since Scott Kazmir, was just idiotic. Why? Well, we had 2 catchers already, 2 that I was very pleased with. Milledge was set to start in right field most likely to begin the 2008 season, so replacing him with Church really gave absolutely no improvement to the team. So why in the world would Omar make this move?

Hopefully, this trade is setting up for a new one. Why do I think this? I don’t think Omar is this idiotic. Yes, he has made some stupid moves in the past year, trading Bannister to the Royals, trading Matt Lindstrom and Henry Owens to the Marlins, but, those trades did not seem absolutely pathetic at the time. This trade does. Which brings me to believe teams were more interested in Ryan Church than Lastings Milledge, which may make sense, as some teams would not like to take in a player with such an attitude and strange and controversial background as Milledge.

My second conclusion to this trade is that Minaya wanted to dump Milledge, because of what I said above- his attitude, and all the controversial things he has already brought to the Mets in his very young career. Personally, even though he had a bad attitude, I really had no problem with it, because, to me, all that matters is how the player performs. However, a GM such as Minaya, who I see as a very tough guy, who doesn’t take any bull, may not want the future of the Mets to be a bunch of thugs like Lastings Milledge. I can see why he would do that, but I still don’t agree with it.

So, yes, in my opinion, Lastings Milledge will be a very special player some day, as I saw during the 2007 season, and this trade will come back to haunt the Mets. Lastings Milledge is a special player. And I really looked forward to him playing for the Mets. But what is done is done, and hopefully this will not come back to haunt the Mets.

The Milledge Trade Looks Worse Today

from MetsLifer.com
If you haven't heard there's news from the winter meeting that the Tigers and Mets are talking about a possible trade that would send Dontrelle Willis to the Mets.

What's the catch? Well, the catch is the Tigers have found themselves with a payroll overload and need to cut back so any deal involving Dontrelle would also include taking Pudge Rodriguez and his +$13MM salary. Now Pudge has a no trade clause, but would waive it if he was offered a contract extension from a playoff team (i.e. New York Mets).

So how does this make the Milledge trade any worse? Well we now have an overload at catcher so for this deal to happen we'd either a) have to cut one of our existing catchers under contract b) find a way to package one of them in a deal for Willis/Rodriguez. The problem with option B is we just signed Castro to a contract and just traded for Schneider and are stuck with his contract. This is not about Ryan Church. Church will bat .270 for us and knock in 60 RBIs. This is about getting a middle of the road catcher early in the offseason before knowing what's really out there.

Of course hindsight is 20/20, but it just compounds the bad feeling I'm getting from the Mets this offseason. I have a horrible feeling that come April 1 we will not have acquired a top notch starting pitcher. Livan Hernandez will be in the rotation. And our bullpen will be very similar to last year.

I'd love for the Mets to make this deal with the Tigers. The Marlins were packaging Willis and Cabrera because they wanted to dump payroll. The Tigers don't really need Willis and now find themselves wanting to dump payroll as well. This is a perfect scenario for the Mets. The Mets could try and send Castro, Heilman, and Mulvey to the Tigers for Willis & Pudge. The Tigers don't need any more bats or big time contracts.

Will this happen? Who knows. But if it doesn't happen in the coming week, it will be less likely that it ever will.

It's official, Milledge goes down

As anticipated the Mets optioned Lastings Milledge to AAA New Orleans to make room for starting pitcher Mike Pelfrey. Milledge only had three at-bats during the first nine games and the best thing for his development will be to start daily. As disappointing as the demotion was, in the long run Milledge will benefit from the experience and will be up soon enough to stay. Pelfrey starts tomorrow night against the Nationals.

The Mets announced on Thursday that Milledge was demoted to Triple-A New Orleans to make room for Pelfrey, who is scheduled to start against Washington on Friday night. Though promoting Pelfrey when the need for a fifth starter arose had been the plan since Spring Training, there was no confirmation that Milledge would be the roster casualty until now.

"It's kind of tough, but you've got to pick things up and roll with it," Milledge said. "I thought I could get it done off the bench, and obviously, I didn't." source MLB.com