Mets: Last winter’s Keon Broxton trade looks uglier this offseason

The Keon Broxton trade was a bad one for the New York Mets almost immediately after the 2019 season began. Less than a year later, it looks even uglier.

Maybe not the most painful trade of last winter, when the New York Mets acquired Keon Broxton in a trade with the Milwaukee Brewers, they did give up three players to land him. There was never a real possibility Broxton would start regularly for the Mets. His poor performance actually led to an early-season DFA, putting an end to his abysmal tenure in New York.

After swapping uniforms a few times in 2019, Broxton returned to the Brewers on a minor league deal. This isn’t what’s so ugly about the deal for the Mets now.

One of the players the Mets gave up to land Broxton, minor league pitcher Adam Hill, was recently traded to the Seattle Mariners for catcher Omar Narvaez. Narvaez will replace Yasmani Grandal behind the plate for Milwaukee in 2020. While not a household name, he batted .278/.353/.460 with 22 home runs in 2019 for Seattle. Lifetime, he’s hitting .276/.361/.411.

Narvaez isn’t an All-Star caliber player but damn if the Mets couldn’t use a man of his talents on their roster for the upcoming campaign. Although the trade does include future considerations, it would seem the Brewers got the best of this deal in more ways than one.

Hill joins a Mariners minor league system already headlined by other former Mets prospects, Jarred Kelenic and Justin Dunn. According to MLB.com, these two—who landed in the Northwest via the Robinson Cano/Edwin Diaz deal—rank higher than every current prospect the Mets have.

Something Brodie Van Wagenen and company have yet to master is player evaluation.

They may have sniped J.D. Davis from the Houston Astros, but the final verdict won’t come for a few more seasons. We still have to see what everyone in the deal ultimately does.

In trades, we often look at what players do for their respective teams or maybe even follow them to another city. In this case, we just have to see what the Brewers managed to turn Hill into—a quality starting catcher.

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There’s no telling what else the Mets could have gotten for Hill if he was still sitting in their minor league system. However, I have no doubt they could have gotten much more than the pitiful performance they received from Broxton in 2019.