One Red Paper Clip

There once was a guy who started with a red paper clip.  And through a series of trades, acquired a farmhouse in Canada.

The Mets have a general manager who started with a crown jewel prospect.  And through a series of trades over five years, acquired Joaquin Arias.

The paper clip has more value.

You can say a lot about the tenure of Omar Minaya’s tenure.  This lineage of trades might be signature Omar.  Crown jewel prospects are either can’t miss, or wheeled as part of a package for a player with immense value (Justin Smoak for Cliff Lee, for example.)  Lastings Milledge had been talked about as a guy who could bring back Barry Zito or Manny Ramirez in a trade.  Instead, the deal fell apart because of money(of course).  Milledge was exposed to the major leagues, then traded for Ryan Church and Brian Schneider.  Schneider was about as useful as creamed spinach at a Texas barbecue and was released.  Church, who was devalued further by Snoop Manuel’s fascination with getting Gary Sheffield at-bats, and even further by Mets doctors who thought “yeah, he can get on the plane fine”, was traded for Jeff Francoeur last season.  Frenchy, after another brutal loss to the Atlanta Braves, was traded to Texas for Arias … who was recently demoted to make room for Alex Cora.  That’s how good Joaquin Arias is.

Alex Cora.

The only redeeming feature about Arias is that he’s probably better than Luis Castillo, who has apparently joined a religious cult where bending is considered a sin.

For this, and this alone, Omar Minaya should be fired … and banned from Citi Field.

Hindsight?  Maybe.  But this has been a Met blueprint: Rush up the prospects so that they can be exposed as “not-ready”, then traded at ten cents on the dollar. 

And please don’t, under any circumstances, bring up the irrelevant fact that Lastings Milledge is no great shakes as a ballplayer.  While true, it’s not the point.  Good GM’s recognize the value of a prospect and protect it until his career takes off or until it’s time to trade him for a major piece to augment the major league club.  Bad GM’s wait until the entire world sees the flaws of the crown jewel, and trades him for a light hitting catcher and a halfway-decent outfielder.  If the Mets knew that this guy was a pretender and waited until everyone else saw it too to trade him, that’s inexcusable.  Almost as inexcusable as trading Scott Kazmir for their own percieved value rather than the value he actually had in the marketplace.

The massive flaws of an organization exposed for the world to see … again.

Now Jeff Francoeur, whose Met career will be marked by a wide smile and a game-ending triple play, is a Texas Ranger.  He’ll probably hit a playoff winning home run off Mariano Rivera to become a cult hero, and then be released halfway through 2011 to open up a chain of Texas barbecue joints named “Mr. 100” in honor of his home run total … or career OPS.  Meanwhile Arias will probably pull his hamstring out of his leg through his kneecap in a freak eating accident, never to be heard from again.

Can we hire the paper clip guy to replace Omar?