Mythbusters

[RealityChuck]

Bosch said from the first that Cardwell was going to be the better part of the deal.



I'll go with the big one: the Nolan Ryan trade was a bad one.



If you look at Ryan's record, he was a stinko pitcher that year, and his numbers each year declined, going from a WHIP of 1.254 to 1.586 and increasing each year. He was especially bad during the second half of the season, with a 7.74 ERA. The conclusion was that he would never make it big, and he wasn't even the important element in the deal: the Angels would have accepted Jim McAndrew, whose WHIP that year was 1.218. The Mets chose Ryan (McAndrew even had a better WHIP the next year than Ryan).



OTOH, Fregosi was a multiple all star and all contemporary accounts of the deal thought the Mets had won it.



Alas, Ryan immediately turned it around and Fregosi kept getting injured.



So I disagree that it was a bad deal. It was a good deal at the time that didn't work out.