The Mets Police

Yeah, I thought Heath Bell had some promise when we had him. But the entire '05 bullpen was a disaster, and Bell may not have been the best of the bad lot. In any case, they were actually worse than last year (last year wasn't a total disaster until Wagner went down), and not a single one of them was back for '06 (though we did get Bert Hernandez back at the deadline, along with Ollie Perez, after Duaner went down). So all I can really say about Bell is that I'm glad he's doing well where he is, and glad that he's not in our division (;-). Not that the Pads as a whole will scare anybody this year anyway. 

And speaking of Bell, Royce Ring (the supposed hot prospect lefty reliever we got from the Chisox for Robby Alomar, but he did even worse for us in '05) just pitched a scoreless inning-and-a-third against us today for the Cards. And yeah, they still have Pujols and Chris Duncan held out of the WBC, and both contributed mightily to slaughtering us. Oh well, it is only Spring Training, the guys who are in the WBC are getting to play (and they did get the 80-pitch opposite-field drill, which some of them might even still remember in April), and we get to figure out which of our new (and not-so-new) "small names," is Nick put it, are worth keeping around. Still looks like Freddy Garcia will not be among them, though he claimed he felt better today.

To be fair, Matlack (first name spelled 'Jon,' BTW) had had a lousy year in '77 (7-15, 4.21, which was a much worse ERA then (especially in the NL) than it would be now), and really only had one good year with Texas: 15-13, 2.27 in '78. After that he was .500 or below every year, ERA never below 3.5 (cf. his lifetime average of 3.18, though much of that is the difference between the DH and "pure" leagues), only one other year ('80) with more than 200 IP (pretty standard for a front-line starter in those days) or 100 SO. Milner had a couple of good years with the Pirates (and IIRC always seemed to kill us, and we were in the same division then and saw him 18 times a year), getting back to the WS with them in '79, but not much after that. And don't forget, we also got Ken Henderson and Tom Grieve in that trade (;-).

But no, it was far from the best trade the Mets ever made. But these being the Mets, far from the worst either. Remember, this was the regime of M. Donald Grant, who earlier that same year had traded Seaver. Not coincidentally, the previous year was the last time the Mets finished over .500 (or were anywhere near contending) until '84.