Declaring an early winner in the Chris Bassitt trade

More than a month of baseball has been played and the biggest trade of the offseason for the New York Mets looks like it has worked out in their favor. Through six starts, he’s 4-2 with a 2.45 ERA. He has turned out to be exactly what the club needed in their rotation.

All trades have two sides. The Mets did, after all, trade away two players to acquire him. How are they doing?

Checking in on the two players the Mets traded for Chris Bassitt

The most notable prospect the Mets gave up for Bassitt was J.T. Ginn. Their second-best pitching prospect at the time of the trade, Ginn’s first professional season was a success with the Mets organization. He was 5-5 with a 3.03 ERA.

Now in Double-A for the Oakland Athletics organization, Ginn is having a much different year. After four starts, he is 0-2 with a 6.14 ERA. He does, however, have 12.3 strikeouts per nine. An early assumption: maybe the Athletics begin to look toward whether or not he should be a starter or reliever. The stuff certainly seems to be there. They’re still getting to know him. Given the situation with their major league team, he could always end up in their starting rotation this year regardless of how poorly he does—if there was a text called “jest” it would have been used there.

The other player, Adam Oller, was the Minor League Pitcher of the Year last season for the Mets. He went 9-4 with a 3.45 ERA in 23 starts. Oller actually managed to make it onto the Opening Day roster for the Athletics. Unfortunately, after three starts, he was demoted.

Oller was 0-2 with an 11.17 ERA for Oakland. He has been effective yet wild since going to Triple-A. Already 27, it will be interesting to see how much the Athletics try to force him into big league games with the state of their franchise.

The Bassitt era in Queens is in its infancy and the same goes for Ginn and Oller’s tenures with the Athletics. A wise trade from the start, early results indicate this was the right deal to make.