12 years ago today

[Major League Ready]

 

I think the big problem is he had a great year and we could have used him that year... 

 

And I'll simply note that Santana really put us in a bind by noting that he'd only go to an east coast team. We never got to use the Dodgers at all, and the Mets were essentially bidding against themselves and knew it... We got a pretty crappy haul, and we all knew it the moment we saw it... It was then compounded by rushing Gomez to show that we gotten something for it even though he needed more minor league time and his best years were spent elsewhere in exchange for a good season of JJ Hardy and eventually Capps/Hoey… Good Lord Smith was bad at trading. 

 

My memory might be failing me but I thought Boston had made a nice offer.  We wanted the moon and they dropped out is how I recall it.

[old nurse]

The Twins had a supplemental pick that year. They took Matt Bashore. The year before wash the big shooter and gutterez. To think they would have done better with draft choices is wishful thinking 2010 first round pick was Wimmers. Thos were some bad early round picks

[ashbury]

The Twins had a supplemental pick that year. They took Matt Bashore. The year before wash the big shooter and gutterez. To think they would have done better with draft choices is wishful thinking 2010 first round pick was Wimmers. Thos were some bad early round picks

Concur. Carlos Gutierrez at pick #27; Gerrit Cole was selected next.^* Then the immortal Shooter Hunt at #31 overall, and Jake Odorizzi was taken immediately following. Lance Lynn went shortly afterward at #39. Kind of an interesting confluence of names, all these years later, that were available to them. Hindsight is 20/20 where it comes to those names. But taken together, it provides me no warm assurance that they would have struck gold with additional picks in return for losing Johan.

 

Really a lose-lose situation - trade for relative scraps, or obtain one more year of benefit from his services and then not much in the draft. The underlying problems in the FO were the cause. That, or bad luck - maybe the Cardinals would have grabbed Shooter if he had fallen to them.

 

 

^{*  _{... by the Yankees, and admittedly they did not succeed in signing him.}} 

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

The Twins had a supplemental pick that year. They took Matt Bashore. The year before wash the big shooter and gutterez. To think they would have done better with draft choices is wishful thinking 2010 first round pick was Wimmers. Thos were some bad early round picks

They didn't have to do better with the draft picks to make that a better alternative to trading him.

 

Before they even got the picks, they would have received a 7 WAR ace SP season for a paltry $13.25 mil salary, in a year we received sub-replacement level performance from our opening day stater and missed the playoffs by a single game, in the prime of Mauer, Morneau, Nathan, etc. We would have even avoided the Yankees that postseason (they finished 6 games out of the wild card in 2008).

 

They could have bombed both extra draft picks in 2009 and still come out ahead of what they got by trading him. (Although with one of the picks at #24 or perhaps higher, and the other around #39, I won't claim #25 pick Trout, but it's a reasonable possibility that we could have added another future contributor on the level or Gibson or Grichuk, even with our draft record at the time.)

[Otto von Ballpark]

Alternative history: if Johan becomes a free agent after 2008, it's possible that the Yankees sign him instead of CC Sabathia (Johan was arguably better, and only ~16 months older). And Johan would have missed at least the 2010 postseason, and possibly the 2009 postseason too (he finished both seasons injured for the Mets), which could have benefitted the Twins in a postseason matchup.

 

Or maybe the Yankees sign both. The luxury tax was still just a cash tax back then, with no draft or international penalties (and no draft or international spending limits at the time either).

 

Obviously no way to know or predict Johan's precise injuries at the time, but an interesting "what if" scenario...

[DutchFarmer]

 

I don't know.   Flip side to everything.    Mets paid a fortune for 4 years and 15 WAR.   Gomez had a 4 year stretch of 17 WAR with the Brewers.  I wonder how Mets fans view that trade.   I agree no one in the farm system should be untouchable but I am guessing at one time many  here would have been excited about a  Kepler, Polanco, Berrios for Chris Archer trade at one point.   .   I don't want to be overprotective of prospects but don't to undervalue them either.  

 

Is it too much to ask for the FO to be perfectly prescient of which prospects will turn into stars and then trade the other prospects for current stars?