Revisiting my thoughts on the Milledge for Church+Schneider trade...

I think it is time to revisit my thoughts on the trade...How right was I? Church is a stud.

Saturday, December 01, 2007

My take on the Milledge trade

Ok I know Tejesh, and many other Mets fans were infuriated by this trade, I mean come on, look at it, our "budding all star home grown outfielder" (/end sarcasm) for two scrubs from the Nationals. I loved Milledge as much as the next fan, but to be 100% honest, chances are he wasn't going to be an All Star any time soon. 5 tools? Maybe so, but most of the 5 tools are mediocre at best. While I think he will be able to hit for good average, the ceiling on his power and overall defense or speed doesn't have All-Star written anywhere on it. Lets face it, Milledge was going to be a homegrown, young, cheap, decent outfielder. Nothing wrong with that, but to say this rivals the KAZMIR trade, in which we traded a stud ACE left handed pitcher is disgustingly off base. That brings me to my next point in relation to the Kazmir trade. Zambrano, while a decent pitcher when we acquired him with a bit of upside, had 1 solid season for us. After that? Nothing. We traded 15 years of an ACE lefty pitcher for 1 year of a 4.2 era #4 pitcher. Milledge was traded for a top 3 defensive catcher in the game(who is still only 31), who also handles pitching staffs really well and should make a huge impact right away on our younger pitchers, and an OF'er who was once as highly regarded as Milledge, but might be somewhat of a late bloomer. Church was far from bad last year, he showed good power(43 2b and 15 hr in 470 ab in the worst park for hitters in the league, not to mention on a non contending team with hardly any protection in the lineup) and has had a consistent .275+ avg the last 2 years.
Neither Schneider nor Church are garbage players, to say that is ignorant. Both, IMO, are upgrades to this team for the 2008 season. Is it just me, or am I the only one who thinks Church has a chance to be another one of those hidden gems Omar grabs, ala Maine, who breaks out next season for some ridiculously unexpected(around here) .290+, 30 hr, 35 2b, 100 rbi, season? Sure hes 29, but look at Carlos Pena! Another late blooming left handed hitter who just recently got a chance at 600+ ab in his prime, and look what he did. I'm not saying Church will put up the ridiculous numbers Pena put up, but who is to say he won't outperform an essentially rookie 22 year old outfielder who hasn't really put up any stats worth getting worked up over? I am willing to bet that Church outperforms Milledge in 2008, AND the 2009 season, at least. If you can figure out a fair measure of performance(whether it be OPS, SLG, combination of Average, power, production, whatever), I'll make a friendly bet with you.

The trade isn't fantastic, its not a slam dunk for an Ace we were looking for, and I don't think is was necessary, but whats done is done. It happened, and theres nothing we can do about it besides root for our 2 newest players, and talk about what they will do to help this team win a world series next season. We upgraded 2 positions in one fell swoop. We gave up a guy who's ceiling isn't nearly as high as the 2 other OF'ers we have in our system, and got back someone who becomes my breakout candidate for 08, as well as a catcher who won't get run on everytime someone is on base and will be able to improve this pitching staff tremendously while working with some of our younger "throwers".


http://metsprospecthub.blogspot.com/2007/12/my-take-on-milledge-trade.html