Ranking the 3 Mets trades with the Brewers made by David Stearns from Milwaukee

2) The Mets trade Neil Walker for Eric Hanhold

The notorious 2017 Mets trade deadline was all about saving the Wilpons money. Imagine if we had an owner like Steve Cohen willing to eat some salary. They would’ve set themselves up brilliantly for the future. Many of the regulars were sold off in July and August of that year. This included second baseman Neil Walker. He was swapped for pitcher Eric Hanhold.

Unless the goal was to create some roundabout joke for a Hanhold-Walker trade, the goal of the deal was a failure.

Walker was hitting .264/.339/.442 for the Mets at the time of the trade. He’d put up similar numbers for the Brewers down the stretch. It’s not problematic that the Mets traded him away—a must given his expiring contract and a deal with the benefit of hindsight looks better with how much he declined in 2018 when he returned to New York to play for the Yankees.

Getting so little in return for Walker is what makes this a trade that falls in the more bad than good category. This was contagious for the Mets at the 2017 trade deadline. The only significant piece of any value they picked up was Drew Smith from the Tampa Bay Rays for Lucas Duda.

Hanhold would appear in only 2.1 innings for the Mets in 2018, giving up a pair of earned runs in them. It definitely seems like the Mets used him a lot more than three times. This was an era of forgettable relievers on the roster.

For those curious, Hanhold did pitch in 2023 for the San Diego Padres in Triple-A. An 8.44 ERA in 53.1 innings and 7.3 walks per 9 doesn’t affect this trade at all but it somehow still reminds us of how little the Mets got back in return.