The real reason why the NY Mets trading Pete Crow-Armstrong remains unforgivable

As the New York Mets face the Chicago Cubs this weekend, a big talking point on social media and especially on FOX on Saturday followed by Roku on Sunday will be the 2021 trade that sent 2020 first-round pick Pete Crow-Armstrong to the Windy City. How could it not? Crow-Armstrong appears to have arrived and rubbing salt in the wounds of Mets fans is what the national broadcasts do best.

Every team has their share of misfires. When you’re trying to win a championship, you’re bound to do something stupid like trade a player like PCA for two months of Javier Baez plus a year and a half of Trevor Williams. Despite getting favorable results out of Baez in 2021 and turning Williams into such a useful asset in 2022, this is regarded as a failed Mets trade.

Unlike some trades, the real reason this is an unforgivable move is because of everything else the Mets did at the 2021 trade deadline—not a whole lot.

The Mets-Cubs trade for Pete Crow-Armstrong is made worse by the results in 2021

The 2021 Mets finished 77-85 and well out of reach of a playoff spot. They were 56-48 on July 31. They went into September 65-67. A bad August followed by more losing in September allowed the Atlanta Braves to secure the NL East title while eventually going on to win the whole thing. An offensively challenged Mets team was left behind in a season which saw Jonathan Villar bat over 500 times, Dominic Smith work as the everyday left fielder, and Francisco Lindor accomplish very little.

The Mets were not a team meant to make it to the postseason and yet they tried to convince themselves they could with the big trade with the Cubs. Their rotation added only Rich Hill while at the same time they lost Jacob deGrom for the remainder of the year. Taijuan Walker’s All-Star season turned sour. The return from the IL for Carlos Carrasco never got off the ground.

This was a team that needed a whole lot more at the trade deadline to keep up with the serious World Series contenders. They kind of got caught in the middle of making a bold trade without doing quite enough to ensure it would have the payoff large enough to be worth their while. The trouble here is if the Mets were to trade away other notable prospects who’d grow into studs like PCA, they could have created an even bigger mess.

We loathe this Mets trade in part because PCA would have been a long-term answer at a position this organization constantly has to experiment with. But the real reason why it stinks so much is because even with Baez and Williams playing well in 2021, we didn’t even get the bare minimum of a playoff run.

All seasons are remembered for how they finish rather than how they begin. The 2021 Mets spent a lot of time in first place early on despite never pulling too far away. In the end, they had a little too much trust in the team built over the offseason. Not enough bullets were used at the trade deadline, only one atomic bomb that this weekend we won’t hear the end of. At least we’ll have Gary Cohen on the call Sunday to divert the conversation elsewhere.