5 former Mets players the team gave up on and traded too early in their career

2) NY Mets traded Mike Scott too early in his career

A future teammate of Nolan Ryan’s was involved in one of the next most egregious trades in franchise history where a pitcher looked like he could become something yet never managed to get quite where the team needed to justify keeping him around. This guy is Mike Scott who after the 1982 season was traded to the Houston Astros for Danny Heep.

Scott was 7-13 with a 5.14 ERA for the 1982 Mets. They had seen enough.

Scott was better in 1983, going 10-6 with a 3.72 ERA. A year later, the Mets looked like they made the right call. Scott was 5-11 with a 4.68 ERA. That was the end of his career.

Not quite. Scott reached a whole new level beginning in 1985. He went 18-8 with a 3.29 ERA then topped it the following year by going 18-10 with a 2.22 ERA to lead the league. Backed up by over 300 strikeouts as well, it was an easy choice to award him the Cy Young Award.

This is probably one of the greatest trades in terms of storytelling because of the 1986 NLCS. Scott and the Astros would face the Mets for the right to make it to the World Series. The ex-Met dominated in both of his starts. Each was a complete game with only one run for the Mets in those 18 innings. They still managed to pull away as the victors.