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March 21, 2005
Great Disasters in Mets History
On May 11, 1972 the San Francisco Giants had seen enough of Willie Mays. The Say Hey Kid was in the decline of his career, so they sold him out to the Mets for Charlie Williams and 50 grand.
The humiliation must've killed Willie. The only organization he'd ever played for just dealt him for a swingman who would post a career 3.97 ERA.
Mays would go on to only play in another 135 games after the trade, retiring in ’73 when he hit a feeble .211 in 66 games with six homers.
Aside from Yogi Berra’s sad four games with the Mets in ’65, the Mays deal marked the first time an impact hitter went to Flushing only to see the rug yanked out from under his career.
It wouldn't be anywhere near the last, though.
Feb. 28, 1981: Dave Kingman. Nobody is ever going to confuse the career .236 hitter with Ichiro, and the gale winds coming out of Candlestick Park from '71-'74 had nothing to do with the Bay, and everything to do with the wind generated from all the whiffed hacks Kingman and Bobby Bonds took, but Kingman could rip the cover off the ball.
He was so strong, in fact, one tour of duty at Shea couldn't bring him down. He wasn't so fortunate the second time around.
Though Kingman hit 37 dingers in '82, the effort nearly finished him. In '83 Kingman posted career lows in RBI, homers and average (when his .198 didn't beat his listed weight of 210).
Fortunately for Dave, three years in Oakland cured him of the Flushing blues, where he'd hit the final 100 homers of his career.
Aug. 30, 1990: Tommy Herr. A career .270 hitter and decent run producer, Herr goes from Philly to New York and promptly goes in the toilet. He only eked out a .216 average with the Mets and collected 24 RBIs. Little more than a year later, Herr's career was over.
Dec. 2, 1991: Bobby Bonilla. The king daddy of Met disasters, Bonilla was a perennial All-Star before the Mets, an overpaid, injury-plagued prima donna after the Mets.
After three crummy seasons in Flushing, Mets brass get sick of him and ship Bonilla to Baltimore despite a hot start to the '95 season. He goes on to throw up more than 200 RBIs over the next two seasons, stumbles after getting traded to the Dodgers and winds up back in New York, where he'd become best known not for his 60-game, .160, four-homer campaign, but for playing cards with Ricky Henderson in the clubhouse during the playoffs.
Oct. 26, 1992: Tony Fernandez. Five-time All-Star before the Mets, .225-hitter with the Mets.
Shea also ruined Fernandez's running game, just like the ruined an even better speedster in ...
Jan. 5, 1994: Vince Coleman. 110, 107, 109, 81, 65, 77, 37, 24, 38, 50, 42. Guess which stolen base totals are from three injury-riddled seasons with the Mets?
Feb. 8, 1994: This is the date the Mets signed Rey Ordonez as an undrafted free agent. Draw your own conclusions.
Dec. 1, 1998: Although Robin Ventura had a big first season as a Met, the kryptonite they keep in the clubhouse took its toll. Ventura dropped from a .301/120 RBI year in '99 to .232/84 in '00 and .237/61 in '01. A couple of years at The Stadium got him back on track, though.
July 24, 1998: The Mets dumped .260-hitting Melvin Mora in '98 for Mike Bordick. Mora broke out for a .340/27/104 campaign last year. Bordick is still padding those 600-some RBIs he has in his 14-year career.
July 30, 2001: New York swings a halfway decent deal in dumping mediocre Rick Reed for power/speed guy Matt Lawton. When Lawton only puts up three homers in a third of a season, the Mets go ahead and flip him for ...
Dec. 11, 2001: Roberto Alomar. If you had to write a case-study in finding the bright line on when a player's career went straight to hell, you'd start with Alomar's '02 season with the Mets.
After three straight seasons of over-.300 hitting with 300 RBI and 60 homers as a second baseman, Alomar hit .266 with 53 RBI and 11 homers for the Mets. He wouldn't even last another season in Flushing, and was forced to retire this week because he couldn't get the voice of Ralph Kiner out of his brain.
Jan. 21, 2002: Much to Jeromy Burnitz's eternal shame, he got traded in '94 for Dave Mlicki. The silver lining is that it got him away from the Mets and into an organization where he could flourish. Like Cleveland. And later, Milwaukee.
Once Burnitz entered his prime, he turned into a consistent 30-homer/100 RBI threat. Life's good, right? Not so fast, Jeromy, you just got traded back to New York. The result? A year and a half of sheer mediocrity sucking up the poison fumes in Shea's outfield.
A year away from the toxicity outside of LaGuardia, Burnitz puts up 37 homers and 110 RBIs in the thin, thin air of Coors Field.
Let's also not forget that Kaz Matsui was billed as the "Japanese A-Rod." The shortstop made his debut last year like the "Japanese Rafael Belliard."
What's the point of all this? I mean, other than trying to humiliate Mets fans?
Well, if you think you see a fork sticking out of Carlos Beltran's back ... you're probably not imagining things. Congrats to all the fantasy owners that got him in the first round.
Posted by Sherard at March 21, 2005 04:22 AM
Comments
Get Willie out of this mess.
Posted by: TC at March 21, 2005 04:34 AM
And to think I was depressed when they traded Nolan Ryan for Jim Fregosi......
Posted by: dabize at March 21, 2005 08:20 AM
FREGOSI!
God, I laughed with Howard Clarke about that one....
Posted by: TC at March 21, 2005 12:24 PM
May you add Carlos Beltran to a future list.
Posted by: (MF)NYHLLRSF at March 21, 2005 06:18 PM
2 things: how could you forget that fat bastard Mo Vaughn? He's still collecting paychecks, but he's sat out of baseball the last 5 years because if antoher team picks him up he'll have to give back 8m of his signing bonus.
The other thing is you forgot what they gave up for Vince Coleman. The only met I ever liked, Rusty Nales himself, Lenny Dykstra. How you trade a guy like that is beyond me.
Posted by: Collins at March 21, 2005 08:13 PM
You're right. Not including Mo Vaughn was a complete oversight. I had him in the original list, and somehow he just got skipped over.
Posted by: Jason at March 21, 2005 09:55 PM