Things I Might Have Been Wrong About

1) The trade that sent Lastings Milledge to the Nationals for Ryan Church and Brian Schneider was definitely a bad deal for the Mets in the long run, and could even be deleterious in 2008. I wrote:

Kazmir, Part 2.

Milledge for a league-average outfielder and a mediocre catcher.

Lastings will outperform Church next year.

Simply amazingly bad.

Surely this was an exaggeration. Lastings was pretty terrible for most of 2008, but has picked it up considerably in the past month. And while he looks terrible in center field at times, his metrics are pretty good.

All in all, Lastings has improved in his greatest hitting deficiency, chasing outside pitches. As he develops, his bat will be quite valuable as an above-average center fielder.

But the Mets might not be where they are today, poised to make the playoffs, had this trade not been made. And I need to admit that. Brian Schneider is overrated as a defender, and his bat is weak, but it could be a lot weaker. He draws walks, which is helpful. And he doesn't get injured quite like Ramón Castro, this blog's catcher-of-choice.

And Ryan Church has a nice steady bat and impressive corner outfield glove, but he's just a corner outfielder, and they're not that hard to come by. I know that may sound weird to fans of a team who have fielded the likes of Marlon Anderson, Damion Easley and Endy Chavez in the outfield day after day, but it's true.

Still, Church is young and under team control for a few more years. That's worth quite a bit.

2) When he was called up, I wrote of Fernando Tatis:

Tatis is an ancient curiosity, an infielder who was never good at playing infield but now "plays" outfield. His only skill is power, which is easily exploited because his swing is long, loopy, and slow. He briefly experienced success in the late nineties when the general quality of pitching in the league was very low, but he has no place on a major league roster except as [a] comical token veteran reserve.

Well, I was wrong. Somehow Fernando went .297/.369/.484 with 11 home runs and played an adequate left field. When he suffered a separated shoulder the team took a big hit.

Perhaps part of the animosity was that I was beginning my campaign for Valentino Pascucci, who seemed in all respects more worthwhile of the role Tatis was filling. A right-handed bat with better numbers who plays the same position should get the call over a guy who is familiar only because he played in the major leagues once before and flamed out. I stand by that justification, but humbly admit that I never expected Tatis to be this good. I also doubt very much whether he will be able sustain a level of production anywhere near what he did this year.

By the way, the justification for Pascucci over Tatis still holds for Nick Evans. I guess the team figures that Evans is part of the future and Valentino is not. Fair enough. But this is not a team figuring out what it will look like in two years. It is a playoff team that has no reason to start the arbitration clock on a youngster who is clearly not ready to play major league baseball.

3) The Johan Santana trade will be a long-term loser for the Mets. I wrote for Mets Geek:

The Mets traded three starting pitchers with a good chance of major league success and a high-upside outfielder for one year of one pitcher and the privilege of giving him the largest pitching contract ever. There is a lot of risk here.

Again, here, I wrote:

...the Mets are giving up the high-end potential of six below-market years for four players, a total of twenty-four below market years, for one single below-market year of Johan Santana and the special privilege of giving him the largest contract ever given to pitcher.

Of course, you can say that Santana is worth any number of prospects. After all, he is The Best Pitcher in Baseball, and an opportunity to acquire TBPiB doesn't come along every day. Thus, the Mets were smart to snatch him up, and even smarter not to trade their best prospect, Fernando Martinez.

But why, then, did the Yankees and Red Sox compete with each other not to acquire Santana? Why did they fall over each other trying to hit the other one with the winner's curse? Why, as Bob Klapisch reports, did they turn aside even the meager packages the Twins requested at the end, before turning to the Mets?

My arguments may yet prove prophetic, but the relevant players' performances this year indicate otherwise. As David Lennon writes after posting their statistics, "I'm sure the Mets will be happy with this deal for a long time."

The relevant number for Carlos Gomez is his .294 OBP. Plate discipline was, and remains his problem. He is a superb center fielder, a tremendously fast and intelligent base runner, and a quality swinger-of-bats. Unfortunately for the Twins, all of that will amount to a hill of beans if Gomez doesn't learn plate discipline and patience. Yes, he's only 22 and could still learn, but the big leagues ain't the place to do it.

23-year old Kevin Mulvey will almost certainly be a big league pitcher. He had a 121:48 K:BB ratio in AAA. That's very solid and consistent with his numbers through all levels. I'm not sure about his other peripherals (ground balls, mainly), but having a huge K:BB disparity in the right direction is half the battle. But Mulvey himself does not a Santana equal, even considering (as is absolutely necessary in evaluating these things, despite the ignorance of the mainstream media in this respect) the aspects of team control and salary.

The 25-year old Philip Humber could still be a solid major leaguer, but his 106:49 K:BB ratio at AAA is not good enough to cut it in translation to the majors. He also gives up far too many home runs (21 in 136 innings).

Deolis Guerra? Well, he has taken a big step back. See for yourself.

Financially, I think the Twins will probably get equal value out of this trade. But that's in terms of money paid out for performance, strictly. If one counts the money that Santana will surely earn for the Mets by helping them get to the postseason (and if they make it by less than three games, which they almost certainly will, you can thank Santana for it), it makes the trade a clear win for the Mets.