Frayed Knot wrote: Edgy MD wrote: SteveJRogers wrote: A lot of it was there from the start though. The idea that the Met owners were trying to make the Mets more bland and mechanical has always been a knock against the move. Not to mention the assertion that he was a bad influence on Doc & Darryl which clearly was a wrong assertion. It's always been a silly assertion. And it wasn't there from the start, but retroactively — and in some cases, bizarrely — re-writing history. Kevin Mitchell was never the Mets' leftfielder, not as a full-timer. They had a three-way platoon between left and center for the second half of 1986, and he was squeezed in all around the diamond, earning him the nickname "World." It was an explicit part of Frank Cashen's philosophy to make one major lineup change each offseason, to keep things chuning and players from getting too comfortable. Being set at most positions, they saw the ad-libbed outfield alignment as a spot to target, and spent the 1986-1987 offseason looking to set on a fulltime leftfielder and maybe a shortstop, and seriously considered a major trade moving all of their top prospects in a huge deal for Harold Baines and Ozzie Guillen. They instead went for McReynolds. The wisdom of that may well be argued (they made a lot of questionable consolidation trades in this period) but imagining a business meeting where the minority owner of the defending champs barks at the GM that they need blander players (and the GM seriously acts on this) just stretches all credulity. But folks have been imagining it for 30 years, and lacking evidence, they take speculation as fact, or just make evidence up. The champion of McReynolds wasn't the Wilpons or any desire to make the Mets "blander" (that's absurd revisionist history). Look instead to Joe McIlvane who said at the time and since that KMcR at U-Arkansas was THE best amateur player he ever scouted. McIlvane became the Mets scouting director in 1981 but it must have been after the draft (or he was overruled) because that was the year the Mets took Terry Blocker two picks before the Padres grabbed McReynolds. By '87 McIlvane was asst GM and didn't want to miss out on him a second time and obviously was successful in pushing for the trade. Remember that McReynolds was essentially replacing George Foster as far as succeeding him as opening day LF'er. When adding to a team coming off a dominant season and a WS win, opting for him rather than a half-season rookie was a no-brainer. Fans of that era could possibly pint fingers towards good ol' fiery Wally and his 70 point tumble in OBA between '86 & '87 as one possible factor for the next season not going as well as the previous, but of course that doesn't fit in well with the pre-determined narrative and fans were still calling for Wally's return into the next decade. That, and the entire pitching staff spending time on the DL, not to mention the season starting with Doc in rehab