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November 30, 2007
The Mets have sent Lastings Milledge to the Nationals in exchange for catcher Brian Schneider and outfielder Ryan Church. Seems like a pretty shoddy trade on the surface, as Schneider isn’t a significant upgrade over a Ramon Castro/Johnny Estrada platoon, and Milledge and Church are essentially the same Frankly, I’m not sure what Omar Minaya was thinking on this one. Eric Simon has far too much time on his hands. He sleeps upside-down, keeps people as pets, and can be found on the internets at Amazin' Avenue or bothered directly at eric@metsgeek.com. 285 Responses to “Milledge Traded for Schneider, Church”Leave a ReplyYou must be logged in to post a comment. |
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I don´t understand this trade, but this
is just the height of fan hubris. Yes, we fans always know the players better than the guys who have spent their whole professional careers in baseball. Just consider for a second that there might be things the Mets organization knows/see/believes that are more informed than what we know…
Going off our own observations from the end of 06…I think we can say we are qualified to have an opinion on how intelligent the Mets Front Office is.
You see, no. No offense, Dave, but I don’t buy it.
A baseball GM isn’t a brain surgeon or pilot or… a nurse or or a lawyer or a teacher or… any number of jobs that either need very specific skillsets or very specific degrees and board approval and state competency tests.
He’s a guy who speaks well at a press conference, knows a lot of guys in the baseball profession and… hopefully… knows a lot about baseball. And there’s no tests or proficiencies to prove that you know what you’re doing, there’s no classes, there’s nothing like that.
It’s all in what you do.
Omar traded his team’s best positional prospect/their best option for right field next year… costing almost nothing… for a can’t-hit defensive catcher and a mediocre .270-with-no-power hitting outfielder pushing thirty.
For two players where… if you wanted to fill those holes, you could’ve gotten better options at those positions for not-much money as free agents with-OUT giving up your best prospect.
Yes.
We know better. Lots and lots of people know better.
He poured money and four years into a second baseman who peaked five years ago and might not have the knees left to get through ONE season, okay?
Minaya puts way way way way way way way too much priority on pleasing the local press and on having players on his team that he likes as people and his manager likes as people…
And not damned enough into fielding the best possible team.
Yes. Yes, many of the people here would be a better GM than Minaya at this point. Ohhhhhhhhhhh, we probably don’t understand contract law. Omar probably doesn’t either. That’s why he has lawyers on staff.
He’ll make huge bonehead moves to have nicer guys on his team and to make splashes in the press.
I have a BS in Writing for Television Radio and Film but… I pay attention to baseball and I’d put winning over impressing Mike and the Maddog and/or having a rightfielder who will show no emotion on the field and make pleasant conversation at dinner.
Hell yes, I’d be a better GM than Minaya has been this off-season.
A lot of the people here would, given the chance.
Hell yes. I see no actual evidence otherwise, beyond the fact that the dude stumbled into the job.
amen
LF, I don’t agree at all to that. Overall I still think Omar is a good GM. This trade doesn’t make much sense to me, and makes me think that Lastings had lost favor in the organization and was going one way or another. We all knew his value to other teams was fairly low, I just figured that meant that we would be having him in RF next year not traded for lesser value.
There are many many GMs in baseball that don’t have moves as solid as Maine, Perez, Sanchez, Valentin, Mota (the first time around), Endy Chavez, Pedro Feleciano.
Not to mention the FA signings which I have been mostly happy with in terms of who he has been willing to spend the money on (Wagner, Pedro, Beltran) and who not to (Zito, Soriano, Weaver).
This trade is a mistake, and Omar has his mistakes, he clearly undervalued the pitchers he sent to San Diego, he has undervalued Lastings, and he didn’t see what Bannister had in him (still doubt he will amount to much over time).
Overall, Omar is still one of the best GMs in baseball, he has made his mistakes, but he has balanced keeping prospects vs trading them and has been a very good GM for the Mets.
Omar is a very good intuitive GM; however, he seems to have no understanding of comparative value. For instance, how much is Schneider worth over Castro/Estrada? How much is Church worth over Milledge? If these are improvements, how much are they improvements? How much is worth giving up for them? What other options are there on the market?
If he’s asking these questions, he’s got getting the right answers. If he is getting the right answers, he’s ignoring them.
Surely there is a contingent of people in the Mets’ organization who absolutely hated this trade and said their piece in opposition.
“Low to other teams”?
How? How could his value be actually low to other teams?
Every tool is there and the only thing that’s stood in his way has been getting jerked around, out of being an everyday players, out of what can really only be perceived as the press’s rascism against a confident young black man in a sport that is basically “for” Caucasians and Hispanics in the press’s eyes.
All those tools and the fact that he was enthusiastic about success makes him worth a no-hit defensive catcher and a roster-filler corner outfielder that’s basically only an everyday player on a team like the Nats?
I don’t buy it.
I don’t know JSC. Minaya has made some good moves: Ollie, Maine, Valentin (1st time), Endy, Mota (06), etc.
He has made some bad moves: Lastings, Heath Bell, Bannister, Valentin (2nd time), Mota (2nd time), Schoenweiss.
He has made some ehhh moves: Lo Duca, Delgado
Overall, I think it might tip him slightly positive for the past few years (barely). Perez and Maine were truly great moves. The trade today was truly awful. His other successes (we won’t count just throwing $ at FAs like Beltran and Wagner) and failures were in minor deals. Most of these were short term; but the losses of Bell and Bannister have the potential for long-term failures, where as the successes were all short-lived.
Omar cannot rest on the laurels of that truly amazing 06 team. The castillo signing and this milledge trade are bad moves and, IMO, show shortsightedness and a philosophy antithetical to player development (even Omar’s fetish with drafting college relievers speaks to this).
Omar’s track record is not that of “One of the best GMs in baseball”. Look at the Yanks, Red Sox, Indians. These teams are built on a homegrown foundation, and are devoted to developing young talent (this is relatively new to the Yanks to be fair). Omar does not seem to have a commitment to this, and if you are not going to bother with developing your prospects, then the least you can do is try to maximize their value in trades. I think we all know Omar has not proven himself capable of doing that.
Omar said in the interview with Mike and the Mad Dog, that Church is capable of putting up better numbers next years, because 2007 was the first time he was given a chance to play regularly. What the FUCKITY FUCK?!!Is the same not true, but even more so of Milledge going forward?
Also, he seemed impressed that Church hit so many doubles in a large park like RFK. Well wouldn’t that help in the doubles department. It’s not like Shea is going to help him improve his XBH total.
Those two statements, taken as “spin” are insulting to the intelligence as Mets fans. If they are not spin, then Omar comes off as illogical and stupid.
So either way, I say “FUCK YOU OMAR”
Ballplayers, as much as they are comparable in many ways, are not stocks or commodities, and cannot be valued as such. A ballplayers only real value is what he contributes to the team, 90-98% of which is on the field, and what another team is willing to give in trade. The payroll disparities of baseball make this abundantly obvious.
To say that Omar stumbled into the job is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve heard in a good long while. He started working for baseball teams in 1985! Whether you agree with the hiring practices and talent evaluations of baseball exec’s or not (and I defy you to show me a true and 100% accurate meritocracy), to say someone with 22 years in the field “stumbled” into his job and then claim that you could do his job better astounds me. And how do you know how healthy Castillo’s knees are? Do you have a spy at the hospital? Do you really think that anyone could make it through the many levels that now exist in a baseball front office to the top position if they gave away 4 year/25 million dollar contracts to players recovering from surgeries without getting a prognosis that the player would be able to perform adequately?
Baseball management is not a science, and to I can prove it’s difficulty with two players: Walt Dropo, and Sandy Koufax. I think everyone knows the Koufax story, but look at the year he had (his sixth in the bigs) before he started his run, 1960: 8-13, with a 3.91 era (0.04 below the league ave). He did have more strikeouts than innings pitched, but at that point he was a top draft pick that had failed to live up to the hype his arm created. Would you trade a guy who had had 6 years to prove himself, and had a scorching fastball, no control, and a 36-40 mark to show for it?
Walt Dropo, a little less famous to be sure, won Rookie of the Year for the Red Sox in 1950, with a Williams-esque debut: 34 hr’s, 144 rbi’s, and a .322 batting average. Would you ever trade a player that started off like that? He than began to decline, fairly rapidly (http://www.baseball-reference.com/d/dropowa01.shtml), having one more good power year and a couple more good rbi totals, but never again approached the average, and was traded (with a group of players, for a group including HOF 3b George Kell), being a baseball one hit wonder.
EVERYONE hypes their prospects, even the Padres tried it with Matt Bush, for the week or so before he got busted. Remember the outcry when Ian Bladergroen was trade for Mientkiewicz (man that deal is fun to spell!)? How does it look now?
By the way, the Matt Bush comp is terrible because everyone knows that the Padres just drafted him because he was cheap.
Omar needs to be investigated by the players assoc. He has singlehanded ridden himself of All Black players. And as a black man it disgusts me!!!
I’m glad David Wright isn’t black because he probably would of been traded for Vinny Castillo and a bag of chips
I think Lastings will make OMAR pay with his bat this upcoming season.
koufax was 24 years old in 1960. the answer to the question is that unless i got a hell of a lot back, no, i would not trade a 24/25 year old with more k’s than ip in both of the last two years. dropo was 27 in 1950. the answer to the question is yes, i would trade a guy who didn’t break into the majors until age 26 and out of nowhere had a great season at 26. i would trade him to omar minaya for lastings milledge.
those two were ehhh moves? gimme a break!!!
without those two, the Mets don’t reach the playoffs in 2006.
Marlon Anderson
Damian Easley
Also with Dropo the reason he was never the same is he broke his wrist and he was never the same. Seriously, don’t argue baseball trivia with me, it’s not worth it.
Oh come on, since coming to the Mets as GM he’s acquired Darren Oliver, Gerald Williams, Marlon Anderson (twice), Ben Johnson, Damien Easley…
These racial allegations against Omar are getting absurd. The fact is that thee are very few African Americans in baseball these days for whatever reasons (even though there are a whole lot of “black” hispanic players). But that’s not Minaya’s fault.
The Milledge deal is suspicious, but only because one can draw the conclusion that Minaya is a secret agent operating in league with the Nationals front office.
He was that franchise’s former GM. Hmmmmmmmmm…….
i nominate “dropo” as ryan church’s nickname.
what about gotay?
Puerto Rican
I think Gotay is Latin but I could be wrong. Thats BS Omar not wanting black people on the team. Just ridiculous now.
Gotay is from PR. I think Omar still thinks he is GM of the Expos now Gnats
fireomar, i’ve got a baseball trivia question for you. i’ve been wondering all day about it, because i can’t think of any position players who’ve hit league average at 22 in the majors and then flamed out. you don’t have to look it up or anything, because it would be a lot of work, but off the top of your head how many players can you think of in the last, say, 30 years who have been league average at 22 and not developed into good ballplayers (say 115 ops+ through age 30 or so as the criteria). i’m not challenging you or anything; i’m just wondering because i cannot believe so many people have given up on lastings.
i saw a couple of interviews with gotay and, of course, watched him play. i liked what i saw. the guy is straight up. i hope we hold on to him for ‘08.
I think Willie doesnt like Millo and his attitude. I thought it was about winning?? I thought Willie was ‘The Teacher”. He is garbage. He is such a bad manager and I now think omar smokes crack
delino deshields, i guess, right?
I think the problem here is that for whatever reason folks have blinders on and hope that this is going to turn out to be a good trade. The OVERWHELMING opinion, trust me I:ve spent most of my free time today looking at expert analysis of this deal, is that this is a really really bad deal. Anytime a GM has to rationalize a trade during his press conference, that’s a clear sign somethings up. Lets just hope that something else is on the horizon that makes us forget about this ridiculous move.
i will never forget.
Estrada and Church and Gotay for HAren??
I agree killjoy. This is by far the worst move Omar has made. He should be fired
omar mumbled and bumbled and stumbled through his interview today on wfan.com. there is something wrong with this picture…
Omar is a fool. I am glad i gave up My tiks. I probably will not go to a game this year thanks to Omar-Willie
milledge is better than delmon young.
totally…. and I think the reason is that he was FORCED to trade LM because the Wilpons didn’t like his attitude, ie, the showboating, rap stuff….I am NOT justifying the trade, but I do believe Jeff W was behind this one 100% and not Omar
It doesn’t KILL the Mets future, but it goe down as a lousy trade if LM turns out to be a star
no….right now he isn’t better than young
do you think the wilpons demanded a trade immediately? i can’t imagine this deal wouldn’t still be on the table two months from now. even if the wilpons demanded it, omar still should have done better. or told the wilpons to eat a dick, but i guess no one has principles anymore.
Right now I hate the Mets front office…I was happy bout how we let Reyes and Wright develop but after that we just have no confidence in them. Shit I mean it cost us a playoff last year to not let them pitch now who knows. I hope but nothing less than a perennial All Star berths for Mr. Milledge. Cant wait to hear wasnt he on the Mets at one point. Why’d they let him go? Brian fucking Schnieder!
WHats scary is if the lackluster play continues till the middle of the year Willie’s gone and the shit will really hit the fan. No pun intended.
right now milledge is better than delmon young.
Just came back from scaling the fences at Shea, and leaving some commemorative bling and grills in right field in memory of ITAM.
Farewell, Blastoff. We hardly knew ye.
didnt we trade Kiz because they didn’t like his attitude?? How many times are the Mets going to use that excuse???
As Charles Barkley would say “This trade is just Terrible.”
Who is Kiz? Matsui’s evil twin?
More like Turrble!lol
I’M still trying to figure what the hell are we going to do with 3 catchers??? One who can’t hit.
I hate when my teams make retarted moves!!!! Just give Pete Kendall the damn money!!!!
I meant Kazmir
I would have not been as mad if it was Gomez in this trade. I think Milledge’s ceiling is higher than all those prospect OF’s.
Yep they(Leiter and Wilpon) didnt like Kazmir’s brash attitude. They all cant be David Wright.
Cmon Omar you got to remember to keep Flores on the roster last year! Dammit!
I hope Ryan Church is decent for us…
in the fullness of time, i just hope that it is not shown that the blastings trade was as colossal an error as the kazmir trade was, is, and will always be.
i just can’t take following these lost budding superstars on other teams’ box scores. i can’t take it…
has anyone on Tampa’s management or teammates came out and said that Kazmir had a bad attitude? No!!! I never heard anyone say that, and so what if he did we are talking about 18-22 year old kids. Curt Shilling, Roger Clemens had some of the worst attitudes in the game when they were his age, and still do.
I’M with you bcuster, every year I follow our minor leauge stars thru milb.com, hoping to see them one day start a full season as a Met, and then they are traded away
I’M still want to know why we have 3 catcher’s??
griff: the troika of franco, leiter and duquette conspired to convince wilpon to dump kazmir for a converted headcase position player in a thousand to one shot at a wild card berth in 2004. i am gleaning over the jacket’s role because people get upset…
I really hated John Franco his last 3-4 years as a Met. You could just see him in the dark shadows doing shady stuff
I have a feeling it was franco, Leiter, Glavine and duquette.
i called into the fan once and challenged franco directly on it. he gave a nervous laugh and said he had no role in the kazmir trade. he is a lying piece of crap…
My favorite racist Metsblog post of the day on LMillz:
But maybe Ryan Church can be a doubles machine who plays solid RF defense for us.
Yep, it just kills me that we give up blue chippers for 2 chippers. If this was poker we would of been busted years ago. We pick up players with no fan value or little or no hitting or pitching value. I would of loved to see what Lastings could of done for us in a full year. Now is anyone safe that isn’t latin safe?? Mulvey, Pelfrey, Humber all better be worried.
awful, just awful. blastings was one of our best and brightest. i am shocked and upset they let him go. don’t we freakin’ protect our young? kazmir and blasto: thrown to the wolves because they had talent and a little cockiness
the confidence of youth… (name the movie)
gawdf’nforbid… FOR SHAME, WILLOMAR!
Hey, we got 2 whities for a black man. The white to Latin ratio improved…
I had no ideal Milledge was from the Ghetto, thought he was from an average american home. some people are so dang stupid it makes me wonder why they are alive.
Ditto…
Well if they didn’t like Kazmir or Milledge’s cockiness then I guess the next to go is going to be Gomez because from I read about him he really has a huge ego complex.
Yes, but Gomez is ecempt because he doesn’t speak English or street slang so the media will ignore him and paint him as the typical happy-go lucky Latin caricature they love to portray all of the time (see Sammy Sosa, David Ortiz, Jose Reyes, etc.). He’ll be fine just as long as he doesn’t give the fans or media an excuse to call him “lazy”.
Wonderful. We gave away 16 years of Gary Sheffield 2.0 to get a couple of 30-year-olds who couldn’t hit 20 HRs a year if they played in a bandbox. But no more rap songs at least.
sad to say, but i think you are right, ramon
I’m going to try and look at the positives of this trade. First of all it’s clear that we all value Milledge more than the rest of baseball does. I don’t think Omar said to himself, “sure I can get Santana for Milledge but I really want a great defensive catcher. For whatever the reason this is the best we could do for Milledge. Now I agree that I would rather keep him than get bad value for him but lets look at this another way. I know we need pitching but a defensive catcher can make a pitching staff much better. How many times did we say “how could Laduca call for that pitch”. Than there were the countless runners who reached second because PLD couldn’t throw out the garbage. I don’t count on a catcher for offense so I would much rather be strong defensively back there. As for Church he will probably give us what Milledge would and it will allow Gomez to play some as a platoon. Does it hurt us in the future??? Maybe but we won’t know for a while. If Gomez and Fmart turn out to be better than we didn’t hurt our future at all because we don’t have room for all three anyway. The point is that untill I hear different I don’t think Milledge had a lot of value. Time will tell
Gomez and Fmart are better than
We are giving up 1st rounders high first rounders at that for 33rd rounders.
we will see, the future might be this year is milledge hits around .290 with a big stick.
What round guys were picked means nothing. Piazza was a 50 something round pick
heilman was a 1st round pick 3 times (yankees, twins, mets). look what that got him.. bullpen purgatory..
Jake Peavy was a 15th rd pick so we should’ve been able to trade Milledge for him straight up
My point about the Padres drafting Matt Bush was that everyone knew it was a financial decision, and they still tried to hype him anyway, which I mentioned as an example of how teams always try to hype their prospects. I wasn’t comparing him to anyone, so I don’t understand what you were saying.
And I know that Dropo got hurt, that also wasn’t my point. My point was if you look at his first year, you don’t really imagine that the rest of his career ending up the way it did, anymore than you look at the first 6 years of Koufax’s career and expect him to end up in the Hall of Fame.
And I’m not sure if I understand the earlier trivia question’s criteria, but Gary Templeton kinda flared out after his first few years, and Ben Grieve was Rookie of the Year at 22 and out of the bigs by 29, though he was also productive for a few years, but he seemed to garner a lot of ill will while he played.
Obviously the overwhelming reaction to this deal is wtf !?!? The best rational deduction you can make is that there some additional piece of info that is not yet public knowledge… either a spinoff move involving one of the C’s, maybe a FA signing, or a trade incl’g Church. Look at it this way, if you really were a GM holding one of approx 33 such jobs in the country, would you make trades strictly based on a player’s ethnic/racial background ? If you have a job paying you $500k-$1.0m /yr, arent you going to try and keep it ? As an owner, dont you want your team to be shaped by a GM who will wisely invest your $100m payroll ? Maybe Schneider does have a major impact on a staff; maybe he is excellent with 1st, 2nd yr P’s. Maybe there is hope he can bring the team together whereas Paulie caused some separation with his speak english comment. Ryan’s 43 doubles in just around 500 ab’s is decent. I am willing to bet Shawn doesnt hit more than half that number next year (somewhere else) and if Milo hits 30, that will be significant accomplishment. Milo definitley has more power potential. I found the high fives incident to be nothing more than an expression of enthusiasm and all the negative reactions to it to be whining. Maybe some kind of red flag came up giving the organization doubt about Lastings reaching his potential here. What kind of red flag - I have no idea…. Maybe Lastings said I hate this f$%k^’g place, get me out of here. I didnt like the Castillo terms but I think on this one we have to give it some time. Everything cant be 100% instant gratification. There has to be more to this; if there isnt, then alot of fans may root elsewhere and this GM may have to move on.
alllo gang
milledge actually grew up a couple miles from here in a very upper class community called lakewood ranch. it’s the polar opposite of a ghetto.
While I really don’t like this trade, to compare it to Kazmir is just going overboard. I do think Omar was right on one thing, Mets fans SEVERELY over-rate Milledge.
I still stick by my point, this is not the trade that defines this off season.
Ok Lastings is Sheffield now? Geez, what becuase he was the first african american to come to mind?
Please. If Lastings has ONE YEAR that is good as Sheffield I would be shocked. He doens’t have that kind of power in him.
I can’t believe this thread is talking about HoF players, I was never as big on Lastings as some on this board, but comparing him to Sheffield and other HoF players and talking about all these “All Star” games like they are a given…Geez.
Yes I still dislike this trade, but the way this thread is going we will be comparing this trade to giving away Babe Ruth shortly.
Milledge is African American. He wears bling. He listens to rap.
Ergo, he is a thug from the ghetto.
Racist idiocy.
JamesSC,
Is the ZIPS projection system a Mets fan? It projects Milledge to have a HOF career.
Sheffield at age 22: .194 /.277 /.320 OPS+:67
Milledge at age 22: .272 /.341 /.446 OPS+ 105
On what planet do we have no right to think that Milledge can’t be as good as Sheffield? On what planet has Milledge displayed that he would be incapable of playing in the majors. he has succeeded in every level including the majors, despite not being given time by our idiot manager after he blew away Shawn Green in Spring Training.
Why is it that our organization is this never ending parade of idiots?