When an August NY Mets trade addition hit more HRs than everyone else at his position

On August 14, 2012, the New York Mets made a trade with the Boston Red Sox. It wasn’t your typical summer deal where the goal was to bring in someone to win you a championship. The 2012 Mets never stood a chance even with Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey leading the rotation.

A small deal with the Red Sox brought the Mets veteran catcher Kelly Shoppach for a player to be named later. Pedro Beato ended up as the piece sent to Boston, a journeyman reliever with 94 career MLB innings.

Shoppach wasn’t memorable nor was much of the 2012 season outside of Dickey’s out-of-nowhere season. Shoppach managed to do something pretty amazing in his short time in New York. By popping just 3 home runs, he had more long balls than the rest of the catchers on the roster that year combined.

The 2012 Mets catcher depth chart is one of the weakest in recent history

Josh Thole was necessary for Dickey, but became the guy with the most games behind the plate. He ended up with 100 total. Mike Nickeas was second with 45. Then there was Shoppach with 27. Finally, there were an additional 17 appearances by Rob Johnson.

Thole and Nickeas each went yard once with Johnson failing to show off his home run trot for a single time. Home runs are sometimes a luxury from catchers. However, this team had very little going for it offensively in every way.

The .218 batting average from catchers was 26th in MLB. The 5 home runs combined was the worst, the Cincinnati Reds with 9 being second-to-the-bottom. With just a .567 OPS, the Mets catchers had the worst offense in MLB during the 2012 campaign.

While Shoppach did account for 60% of the catcher home runs, he wasn’t the second-coming of Mike Piazza. He batted .203. Only Nickeas, at .174, was worse among the backstops.

The Mets weren’t blind to this. Both Thole and Nickeas ended up in the packaged deal with Dickey to the Toronto Blue Jays the following offseason in exchange for Noah Syndergaard and Travis d’Arnaud. John Buck, another catcher, was included, too.

Buck would hammer 15 home runs for the 2013 Mets with d’Arnaud getting his first out of the way in an abbreviated year. Buck wouldn’t last the season, traded for the third time in less than 365 days. A consistent enough power-hitting catcher, he obliterated the previous year’s catcher depth chart’s power with 3x as many dingers.

As for Shoppach, he became a free agent and would play his final 36 major league games the following year. With the Mets, he had 3 home runs and 10 RBI in 87 plate appearances. With the Seattle Mariners, he had 3 home runs and 9 RBI in 125 trips to the plate. They released him and a single game with the Cleveland Indians on September 12 would mark the end of his time playing in major league games.

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