Frank Cashen's Top Ten

[Edgy MD]

Off Top of Mongo's Head:

1. Drafting and signing Dwight Gooden.
   
2. Dealing Bob Bailor and Carlos Diaz for Sid Fernandez and Ross Jones.
   
3. Drafting and signing Darryl Strawberry.
   
4. Dealing Neil Allen and Rick Ownbey for Keith Hernandez.
   
5. Trading Lee Mazzilli for Ron Darling and Walt Terrell.
   
6. Trading Walt Terrell for Howard Johnson.
   
7. Hiring Davey Johnson.
   
8. Drafting Len Dykstra.
   
9. Trading Hubie Brooks, Mike Fitzgerald, Herm Winningham and Floyd Youmans for Gary Carter.
   
10. Trading John Christensen, Wes Gardner, Calvin Schiraldi and LaSchelle Tarver for Bob Ojeda, Chris Bayer, Tom McCarthy, and John Mitchell.

Honorable Mentions:

• Drafting Roger McDowell.
  
• Drafting Dave Magadan.
  
• Hiring Tim McCarver.
  
• Trading Rick Aguilera, Tim Drummond, Kevin Tapani, David West, and Jack Savage for Frank Viola.

[Guest Mets Guy in Michigan]

Pretty impressive list!!!

I'm not sure how I feel about the Viola deal. I know he won 20, but Aguliera was a star for a long time and I think Tapani was serviceable.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Plus there was a whiff of desperation to the Viola deal that the others didn't have. Plus you mentally need to throw Mookie in that deal, since we'd need to replenish the bullpen (with Jeff Musselman) the same day.

What I wanted then was a trade that made Darry Strawberry wake up.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Cashen's Biggest Misses

1. 1984 draft. 1st overall pick to Shawn Abner and the next 8 rounds to high schoolers who never cracked the Majors (where are you now, 2nd rounder Lorenzo Sisney?) Jay Bell and Mark McGwire were there to get in round 1, and Maddux, Glavine and Leiter went in the 2nd round.

2. Dykstra-Samuel trade: Sounded like a clubhouse clearance sale.

3. Two 1st round picks in the '83 draft collecting only Eddie Williams (4th) and Stan Jefferson (20th). Roger Clemens went 19th.

[Edgy MD]

I didn't include the Viola trade on the top ten exactly for that whiff of desperation.

Criminally and totally overlooked by me? Dealing Rick Anderson, Mauro Gozzo and Ed Hearn for David Cone and Chris Jelic. That's top-three-or-four stuff right there.

List of misses has to include not protecting Tom Seaver. (Sentiment aside, it may have cost them 1985.) As far as Clemens (negative sentiment aside), the big miss probably wasn't so much not drafting him in 1983, but rather drafting and not signing him in 1981. Same can be said for 1984, pulling out of pre-draft negotiations with Mark McGwire and going instead for Shawn Abner.

[Edgy MD]

It's hard to judge the impact of draft decisions, because there is so much unknown that it's hard to reason out how much missing a future star who went 29 picks later was poor judgment or poor luck.

I mean... Al Harazin's top 62 misses:

[list:ewbzbphi]1. Passing on Mike Piazza in the first round of the 1992 draft.
2. Passing on Mike Piazza in the second round of the 1992 draft.
3. Passing on Mike Piazza in the third round of the 1992 draft.
...
62. Passing on Mike Piazza in the 62nd round of the 1992 draft.[/list:u:ewbzbphi]

More broadly, that draft was a disaster. The Mets had 50 picks, including three first rounders, and walked away with all of two guys who saw big league time --- overall-number-niner Preston Wilson, and 20th rounder Allen McDill, who spent 38 games getting battered for the Royals and Red Sox.

[Frayed Knot]

Yeah, I wasn't a fan of the Viola deal at the time it was made and certainly wasn't on board with those who felt they HAD to do it.
At some point in a team's development (like when those Top-5 overall draft picks quit falling in your lap) you need to switch gears from dealing prospects for established players to the other way around and I'm not sure Cashen recognized that as the late 80's morphed into the '90s

[Benjamin Grimm]

Was Cashen still calling the shots at the time of the Viola and Samuel deals? I seem to recall that he had taken a step back by then. Those may have been McIlvaine deals.

I do recall Cashen coming out of retirement for a week or two in 1998 to trade Mel Rojas for Bobby Bonilla.

[Guest sharpie]

Dealing Ed Hearn for David Cone should be in there.

[Edgy MD]

I think the the Viola and Samuel deals go on his ledger. Step back or no, one has to be certain he ultimately signed off.

Regarding the switching of gears, for whatever reason, the team's drafts stopped being fruitful, and most of the fruit they garnered was dealt off before it was ripe, which speeded the decline of the orchard's output.

The Viola trade gets the honorable mention because, whatever I thought of it, it gave the Mets their last 20-win season for a while, but WAR-for-WAR, yeah, the Mets lost.

Regarding the brief interregnum he had in the late 1998, it was remarkably productive --- or "productive." Apart from trading Rojas for Bonilla, he re-signed Masato Yoshii for two years. There was one other deal he set in motion, but was completed a day or two after Phillips returned. I'm forgetting what that was right now, though.

Dealing Ed Hearn for David Cone should be in there.

Indeed. I subsequently acknowledged that oversight.

[Guest Mets Guy in Michigan]

The Seaver move hurt, but I understand his thinking.

I was at an event recently and met one of Dennis Lamp's cousins. He was very nice -- and said the same about Dennis. He said Lamp understands the indirect disdain from Mets fans as a result of Seaver being claimed.

[Edgy MD]

I don't understand any animosity toward Dennis Lamp. What does he have to do with anything?

So, help me out. What gets knocked out of the top ten to make room for Cone? Drafting Dykstra, dealing for Carter, or dealing for Ojeda?

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I guess the Dykstra draft.

[Edgy MD]

Perhaps, but macho sentiment, rather than cold hard numbers, often carry the day when the Carter trade is celebrated.

[seawolf17]

Edgy MD wrote: List of misses has to include not protecting Tom Seaver. (Sentiment aside, it may have cost them 1985.)

Gooden/Darling/Seaver/Sid/Aguilera would have been epic.

[Centerfield]

McReynolds for Mitchell was pretty crappy too.

Mike Scott for Danny Heep has to be in the mix too.

I wonder how much of this is luck, and how different Cashen's legacy might have been if Calvin Schiraldi had managed to get one more out.

Right now, he is remembered as the architect of the 86 World Champions. He made all those great moves mentioned in this thread. But he also traded away a future MVP, a future Cy Young winner, a future batting champion and All-Star reliever. He also drafted and failed to sign a Hall of Fame caliber pitcher.

If the Mets had fallen short in '86, I wonder if his legacy would focus on these moves instead of the ones that brought them to the World Series.

[Edgy MD]

seawolf17 wrote: Edgy MD wrote: List of misses has to include not protecting Tom Seaver. (Sentiment aside, it may have cost them 1985.) Gooden/Darling/Seaver/Sid/Aguilera would have been epic.

It's an open question whether Aguilera or Lynch gets bumped to the pen.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Edgy MD wrote: Perhaps, but macho sentiment, rather than cold hard numbers, often carry the day when the Carter trade is celebrated.

Yeah, the Carter trade was a heartbreaker. I strongly believed in clutch back then and Hubie Brooks was "Mr. Clutch."

[batmagadanleadoff]

Mets Guy in Michigan wrote: The Seaver move hurt, but I understand his thinking.

By the end of 1983, the Mets organization might've been baseball's richest. Prospects had to be protected. Sentimentality is the enemy of success. Hard decisions would have to be made. I didn't lose a second of sleep when the Mets left Seaver unprotected, and lost him to the White Sox. The Mets were now in business and Seaver was an old pitcher and who wants an old pitcher? I didn't think it would matter. Neither did the Mets, apparently. But it might have. Seaver, as it would turn out, had one last hurrah in his tank -- he was one of the AL's best pitchers in 1985. Not the best, or second best, but definitely near the top of the list.

[Edgy MD]

This very question was wrestled to the ground and subdued by Faith in Fear seven years ago.

The thing is that Seaver wasn't left unprotected because he was valued less than player X, but rather because he was a veteran with a rich contract. This was briefly the tradition in the brief days of the compensation draft, to expose veterans with rich contracts, partially because few of them were thought to be worth it after a year or two, partially because budgets were set by January and teams were averse to budget-busting acquisitions, partially because of an unstated (and unheeded, in the end) understanding that teams just wouldn't grab these guys.

Chicago did exactly what they should have done with that last bit.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

There was some feeling that selecting Seaver was the White Sox' way of exacting political revenge on Mets owners for their role in deposing Bowie Kuhn, but I suspect that was the Mets' way of dispersing the blame. Doubleday was spitting mad.

I agree Chicago did the right thing.

Ironically (or not) Reinsdorf & the Wilpons have since become close allies and feverent supporters of Selig.

[Guest d'Kong76]

If I recall correctly, the Viola thing was announced late
in the evening. I have to cop to being one of the nuts
hoping and listening to WFAN because I was sure it was
the key to everything!

[Benjamin Grimm]

If the Mets had won five more games in 2006, would Omar Minaya's eventual obituary be as glowing as Frank Cashen's has been?

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

I loved the Viola trade at the time, but then, at the time, I was an 11-year-old half-a-hyperhormonal-dummy.

[Guest Mets Guy in Michigan]

d'Kong76 wrote: If I recall correctly, the Viola thing was announced late in the evening. I have to cop to being one of the nuts hoping and listening to WFAN because I was sure it was the key to everything!

Absolutely! I was in a rotisserie league at the time, and using only American League players. I had Viola, and was ready to pounce and call the league commissioner as soon as the deal was announced. Sadly, I jumped and claimd David West instead of Aguilera.....

[Guest Mets Guy in Michigan]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: If the Mets had won five more games in 2006, would Omar Minaya's eventual obituary be as glowing as Frank Cashen's has been?

...and if Steve Phillips had won the series against the Yankees...

[seawolf17]

Edgy MD wrote: I don't understand any animosity toward Dennis Lamp. What does he have to do with anything?

[G-Fafif]

Ron Darling quotes Tom Seaver a lot from their days together as teammates, yet they were in the same clubhouse for less than a month. I wonder how much Seaver the sage said to Ronnie the rookie in September 1983, how much he said as their paths crossed over the decades and how much Darling imagines was said to him. It all comes out in the "we're a couple of old pitchers who understand how this game is supposed to be played," I guess.

[Edgy MD]

That's also interesting because, after Seaver was fumbled away, a common line (whether it was fed to reporters by anybody in management, I have no idea) held that Seaver was generally aloof toward the young pitchers, and that Torrez was more the mentor that management had hoped Seaver would be.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Edgy MD wrote: That's also interesting because, after Seaver was fumbled away....

I never bought the company line that Seaver was "fumbled" away ... that Seaver somehow got away from the Mets against their will or intent ... (we left Seaver tied to the mailbox, we were in the store for only three minutes, but when we came out, Seaver was gone. Gone). I think the Mets knew what they were doing all along, and it was calculated to the nth degree. They made the tough but unpopular decision to protect their young players over a fading legend and had their story about baseball customs, and oversights and unwritten rules and gentleman's agreements in place beforehand to try and deflect the negative press and sentiment that they knew would result.