When the Mets bolstered their rotation in a trade with the Red Sox

The 1986 New York Mets were dominant, but it wasn’t Doc Gooden or Ron Darling or Sid Fernandez or even Rick Aguilera who led the team in victories, ERA, or WHIP. It was Bobby Ojeda who went 18-5 with a 2.57 ERA and WHIP of 1.090.

Ojeda was pedestrian at best before coming to the Mets. He was 44-39 with a 4.21 ERA in five-plus seasons with the Boston Red Sox. But Frank Cashen desperately wanted a lefthander…a John Tudor type…to add to the Mets rotation.

The New York Mets traded top prospect Calvin Schiraldi, along with some other minor leaguers, to the Red Sox to acquire Bobby O.

It’s not easy to get a top starting pitcher, let alone a top LEFTY starting pitcher, and Cashen played a hunch. The hunch paid immediate dividends when the Mets won the ’86 Series. Bobby Ojeda went from just another average southpaw to a lefty stud in the New York Mets rotation.

Ironically, it would be Schiraldi who would be one of the goats of that ’86 Series.

Those dividends that paid so well in 1986 would not be seen again as the 1987 season would be a disaster. Ojeda – like a number of other Mets, especially the pitchers – went down with an injury limiting him to seven starts and a 3-5 record with a 3.88 ERA. And it was downhill from there. He managed to start 29 and 31 games in the 1988 and 1989 seasons respectively, but only pitched to a 23-24 record.  Then in 1990 in made only 12 starts.

Following that 1990 campaign, the New York Mets gave up on Ojeda, sending him to the Los Angeles Dodgers in a trade that brought a 34-year-old Hubie Brooks back to the Mets. Of course, Brooks’ second stint didn’t last long and that was another acquisition that didn’t pan out for the Mets front office.