MVN - Most Valuable Network

Milledge!

Update: 2:00PM  BLOGS!  Chris is happy!  JammingEcono is Jamming!  Reasoned Optimism on the Farm. MVNs Met’s Blog is not amused.  Neither is Amazin Avenue. 

Nats fan on WFAN.   Getting lambasted for even suggesting the Mets got a little more than Mike & the Mad Dog think they got.  (Actually Mike thinks it’s a bad deal but is reasonable in discussing the deal, Mad Dog thinks the Mets got the proverbial bag of balls* for Milledge)

*from the proverb : “The Fox and the Bag of Balls.”  

ORIGINAL POST:

WFAN (which is what I listen to online) is confirming that the Mets have traded Lastings Milledge for Ryan Church and Brian Schneider.

Their opinion : Milledge interest was drying up, as they tried to pass him off in deals for better players (like Dan Haren) and failed.  Carlos Gome is their OF of the future.  Omar really likes Brian Schneider and they need someone behind the plate.  Church is nothing more than a 4th OF.

My opinion :  Great trade…with one reservation.

Essentially the Nats, as far as they are concerned, are dumping Schneider.  That’s fine.  As I said a day or two ago, if you had a deal for Schneider you make it.   He’s not good offensively, proven over several years, and he’s going to make a decent wage the next few years, money best spent elsewhere as it’s pretty clear Flores (or someone else) was going to be the catcher of this team in 2010.  

By bringing in Milledge the Nats had a way too crowded OF.  No need for Ryan Church.   Personally it’s a bit sad to see him go to a team where he will be again relegated to back-up status but he’s the odd man out and been so for a while.   The organization needed him gone for whatever reason and maybe now they’ll be able to give players real shots to succeed, since they’ll mostly be “their guys”

Milledge…well he could be good.  I don’t think he’ll ever really develop any significant power but he could be a solid hitter otherwise.  The main thing about Milledge is that he’s young.  Real young.   Will turn 23 just as next season starts.   We are still finding out what Milledge can be.   He could be fantastic.  Even if he ends up only being the hitter Church was (.270 / .360 / .480 - which he’s almost there now)  we’ll be getting those numbers on the cheap for a good while.  And probably can expect that for the next decade.   Even if you love Ryan you have to admit he probably only had 3-5 more years before heading toward the exit.

My one reservation - Milledge isn’t much of a CF from what I saw…where is he going to play?  Is maybe Austin Kearns going to take his skills to CF?   It’s a question that needs to be answered because I don’t want to go through another 3 years of complaining that the Nats aren’t giving Milledge a chance to show what he can do…

Of course there is another possibility, could Milledge be the piece is a bigger trade?  Or could Austin? or Wily Mo?  (Or could the Mets have made this deal to move Church to someone else….)

More later

Milledge minor league stats.

Milledge Major league stats.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 30th, 2007 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.