1 past Mets trade that still doesn’t make much sense

The 2017 New York Mets. What can we say about them that we haven’t already said about the grout in our bathtubs or the zit we noticed a little too late into picture day or the neighbor that mows their lawn before 7am shirtless and without the body to justify it?

Most memorable for how disappointing they were, the team made most of its noise at the trade deadline in one of the franchise’s most massive selloffs.

However, it wasn’t completely about selling. Just a few days after the fire sale began, the Mets actually added to their roster. It was a trade with the Miami Marlins that still makes little sense and had an even smaller payoff. 

Trying to understand the 2017 Mets trade for AJ Ramos

The only time you will see the Mets make a deal with any of their division rivals these days is at the trade deadline. They’ve added or subtracted players in deals with the other four teams mid-year because it’s not really that damaging, particularly when the player is a free agent at the end of the season.

The case was different in the 2017 trade for relief pitcher AJ Ramos. He had a year of control left yet the Marlins were still willing to deal him northward to the Mets. Considering it didn’t cost New York a whole lot it wasn’t exactly an all-time bad move. However, it still raises a few questions and deserves a bit of head-scratching to comprehend.

Ramos would save 7 games for the 2017 Mets while pitching to a 4.74 ERA. It was kind of irrelevant what he did at that point. The goal seemed to be to prepare for a role in the team’s bullpen the following season. He got off to a poor start in 2018, posting a 6.41 ERA in his first 19.2 innings of work.

Unfortunately, this was the death toll for the momentum of his MLB career. The man who had gone 15-16 with 92 saves and a 2.78 ERA in his 325 games with the Marlins suffered a shoulder injury that would take him out for the rest of the season, ending his time in Flushing. Ramos became a free agent after the year was over and wouldn’t pitch professionally again until his 2.2 innings of work in 2020 with the Colorado Rockies.

Still playing today, he spent the 2021 campaign mostly in Triple-A for the Los Angeles Angels where he tossed 53 innings and had a 5.26 ERA. Despite this, he did get to throw 4.2 shutout frames for the Halos late in the year.

It’s not so much a bad trade in Mets history. I think I get what they were planning. Ramos was a lighter version of the Mets acquiring Marcus Stroman in 2019. Despite looking dead, the team bought. While it’s not the perfect reciprocal, the plan makes a little more sense when we use the logic that Ramos was an early move for the coming year.

Unfortunately, the result wasn’t nearly the same. Ramos quickly became a forgotten Mets reliever whose time with the franchise lasted for only 49 games.