Did We Make a Good Deal?: July 31st, 2002 Mets Acquire John Thomson
ByThe Deal:
 |
get | RHP John Thomson, Colorado OF Mark Little, Colorado |
 |
get | OF Jay Payton, New York (NL) RHP Mark Corey, New York (NL) OF Robert Stratton, Norfolk (AAA) |
The Why: Well even though the Mets final record of 75-86 is not pretty at the time the made the deal for Thomson they were 4 games over .500 at 55-51 and inline to make a run at the wild card, with the Braves running with the East. The Colorado Rockies on the other hand were a young, struggling team who was willing to take a chance on Jay Payton to fulfill his hype coming out of college that the Mets had given up on. At the time of the deal Baseball America considerd John Thomson “the best player who changed teams” at the 2002 deadline.
Who did it help the most?: Well let’s see Thomson wound up going 2-6 with a 4.31 ERA with the Mets and the Mets going 2-7 overall in Thomson starts with the Mets absolutely collapsin and falling out of playoff contention before he left via free agency in the off-season. Jay Payton on the other hand batted.335 for the rest of the year and doubled his homeruns in half the games finishing the year with 16. Mark Little lasted 3 AB’s with the Mets before being traded for P.J. Bevis who never made it past AAA Norfolk. Mark Corey was terrible for Colorado and Robert Stratton never made the majors and was forever a minor league slugger, but the deal still helped Colorado the most with the 2002 and amazing 2003 Payton put together.
Did we make a good deal?: Bad deal. Although Payton couldn’t sustain the success he had with the Rockies in ’02 and ’03 he still managed to hit 119 homeruns and drive in 521 runs while Thomson put up terrible numbers with the Mets and put up poor numbers for his career outside of one solid year for the Braves in 2004.
Related posts:
Loading ...
