A rundown of the relevant parties:
- Oliver Perez, owed $24/2: Arguably the worst pitcher in baseball, Perez has Steve Blass Disease, minus the connotation of once having good control. Perez allows more homeruns and walks at a per-nine-inning pace than Cliff Lee will allow in the next 5 years.
- Luis Castillo, owed $12/2: Castillo's only skill is plate discipline. After losing most of the joint function in both of his knees, his other two abilities, hitting infield singles and fielding, became impossible.
- Jeff Francoeur, owed 1/$5 (arb. eligible): Despite consistently being the worst rightfielder in baseball for several years, Mets fans are convinced he would be make a good fourth outfielder on a championship team. He's practically Endy Chavez's cousin: no plate discipline, no speed, mediocre power, average fielder, average contact hitter.
- Gil Meche, owed $12/1: Meche was a pretty good pitcher until ex-Royals' manager Trey Hillman made him throw 200 pitches a game starting in 2008. Now, his contract isn't the only number he and Ollie have in common:
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- Kyle Farnsworth, owed $10/2 (option in '11): T3h Pr0f3ss0r is the only useful player in this bunch. He throws about 100 mph in no particular direction, which gives him about 50/50 chance of throwing a strike on any given pitch or having a good year in an particular season.
- Jose Guillen, owed 2/$24: Way overpaid, certainly not a starter on a team serious about contending, and prone to the occasional Iron Sheik-esque rant, Jose Guillen is certainly better than Jeff Francoeur.
The funniest part about this whole proposed-trade is that, if it happened straight-up three-for-three, the Mets would probably be the winners. Winners, though, only in the sense that they'd have cleared some bad contracts in preparation of building next year's roster. If you bother to consider next year's payroll obligations--Bay for $18M, Beltran for $20M, Rodriguez for $12M, Cora for $2M--it's apparent that having a few extra million or ten was never this team's problem.
This trade would just be two organizations flaunting their ignorance to the rest of the baseball world, taking their three biggest failures each and putting them on a pedestal.
I'm just worried they might try to swap urinal cakes too, but hit a snag when Kauffman's are discovered to come from a cheaper distributer.