For a two month rental of the well-traveled slugging Cuban, the Mets gave up two prospects, one of them Michael Fulmer who is highly regarded, but not in the Matt Harvey/Noah Syndergaard way - though one could have easily said the same thing about Jacob deGrom last year. This trade adds desperately needed power to a lineup that has trouble scoring runs in the same way Lindsey Lohan has trouble staying clean. I would love to invoke the name Donn Clendenon, but the Mets have enough jinxes to worry about.
So why was this trade a relief rather than a celebration? Because the Mets can't do anything right the first time, though somehow, they may have gotten things right in spite of themselves. See, just the night before word that a trade for Carlos Gomez had blown through the social media.
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The Mets being the Mets, the trade went around on Twitter before any actual confirmed reports had gone out. And the Mets...being the Mets, they were going to give up Zack Wheeler, a fine young pitcher who they ought to hold on to.
And in the last stroke of the Mets folly/genius, the word of the trade spread through the stadium during the actual game and got to the other player involved, Wilmer Flores. If you missed what happened then you must be living under a rock (and not a big fan of Tom Hanks movies).
And then somehow the Mets found a way to back out of the trade at the last minute, claiming Gomez had medical issues with his hip (which were so bad, the Brewers immediately traded him to the Astros). I have a sneaking feeling the trouble with the hip to the Mets wasn't medical but the size of the wallet therein and how much they'd have to fatten it next year. So how do you come back from all that? Well last night, Flores found a way to forever endear himself to Mets fans by hitting an extra inning, game-winning home run against the first place Nationals. Funny how these things work out. The Mets keep one of their best pitchers and the other player immediately wins the most important game of the season (so far) and they turn around and make a trade for a slugger, which is what they needed more in the first place. If it weren't for dumb blind luck, the Mets wouldn't have any luck at all.
***
As for the title of this post, some might say I stole it from Jerry Seinfeld, and yeah, I did sort of.
Oh my god. @Mets
I can't believe I can actually say this, but is it true that there is now
"A Cespedis for the rest of us"?
#mets
#T7L
— Jerry Seinfeld (@JerrySeinfeld) July 31, 2015
But I remember making this joke back during the 2013 Home Run Derby and I doubt I was the first to make it then either. Let's cross our fingers and hope we can all run this joke into the ground through October.
