Misery Loves Company: Two Guys Watch Baseball

Mets Firesale Underway

Whitney is unlikely to be blogging in the near future. He'll claim that the combined stresses of a new child and a new house are just too much, but we all know that he's even lazier than I am. At least I had a winning streak to fall back on as an excuse. Understanding that he'll be otherwise engaged, I thought I'd spend a few minutes on the trade his Mets made today.

New York sent Roberto Alomar to Chicago for three minor league prospects, including the Chisox' 2002 first round draft pick, Royce Ring, a promising relief pitcher. The Mets will pay all of Alomar's remaining 2003 salary - $3.9 million - as part of the deal. Probably not a bad deal for either team - the Mets get rid of Alomar's corpse, and the ChiSox get to see if they can reincarnate him at no financial cost in 2003. What it really highlights, though, is Alomar's decline.

In his last three years with Cleveland, Alomar put up an average season that looks like this: .323, 21 HR, 103 RBI, .405 OBP, .516 SLG. Awesome, Hall of Fame-type numbers, from a guy who was also one of the league's slickest fielders. In the two years he's "played" with the Mets, his numbers look like this (with '03 projected based on current stats): .264, 8 HR, 49 RBI, .333 OBP, .367 SLG. That's not bad, it's falling-off-a-cliff awful. Man, Mets fans must be happy to get this stiff gone.