The 2021 deal that brought 2020 first-round selection Pete Crow-Armstrong to the Windy City will be a major topic of conversation on social media, particularly on FOX on Saturday and Roku on Sunday, when the New York Mets take on the Chicago Cubs this weekend. Why wouldn’t it? The national broadcasters try their best to add salt to the wounds of Mets supporters, and it seems like Crow-Armstrong has arrived.
Even though the Mets got good results out of Baez in 2021 and made Williams a valuable asset in 2022, this trade is considered a failure because when you’re trying to win a championship, you’re bound to do something dumb like trade a player like PCA for two months of Javier Baez plus a year and a half of Trevor Williams.
In contrast to other transactions, this one is truly inexcusable because of everything else the Mets did at the 2021 trade deadline, which wasn’t much.
The Mets-Cubs trade for Pete Crow-Armstrong is made worse by the results in 2021
With a 77-85 record, the 2021 Mets were way out of the running for a postseason berth. The score on July 31 was 56-48. They moved into September 65-67. Following a poor August and subsequent September losses, the Atlanta Braves were able to win the NL East and ultimately the whole season. In a season that saw Francisco Lindor do very little, Dominic Smith play as the regular left fielder, and Jonathan Villar bat more than 500 times, the offensively challenged Mets squad was left behind.
With the significant deal with the Cubs, the Mets attempted to convince themselves that they could make the postseason even if they were not a squad designed to do so. They lost Jacob deGrom for the rest of the season, and the sole addition to their rotation was Rich Hill. The All-Star season of Taijuan Walker took a turn for the worst. Carlos Carrasco’s comeback from the injured list never got off the ground.
This was a squad that needed a whole lot more at the trade deadline to stay up with the legitimate World Series contenders. They kind of got caught in the middle of making a daring transaction without doing quite enough to assure it would have the reward substantial enough to be worth their time. The concern here is if the Mets were to sell away additional outstanding prospects who’d blossom into studs like PCA, they might have created an even greater nightmare.
PCA would have been a long-term solution at a position this team is always experimenting with, which is one of the reasons we detest this Mets move. The fact that we didn’t even get the bare minimum of a playoff run in 2021, despite Baez and Williams playing well, is the true reason it stinks so much.
Every season is remembered for its conclusion rather than its start. Despite never falling too far behind, the 2021 Mets spent a significant amount of time in first place in the early going. They ultimately placed a bit too much faith in the group that had been assembled throughout the winter. There was just one atomic explosion that we won’t hear the last of this weekend, and not enough bullets were deployed at the trade deadline. At least Gary Cohen will be on the call on Sunday to change the subject.
