3 pointless Mets trades fans will never let the team live down

2) Pointless NY Mets trade: Juan Samuel for Lenny Dykstra and Roger McDowell

This trade is equally as pointless as it is annoying. The 1989 Mets were competing for a playoff berth and yet they managed to ruin a perfectly good platoon in center field. Mookie Wilson and Lenny Dykstra had shared duties at the position for several seasons. Something told them to end it. Wilson was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays. Much worse, Lenny Dykstra and Roger McDowell were traded to the Philadelphia Phillies for Juan Samuel. The Mets also had to toss in a minor leaguer because apparently they wanted to get robbed even more.

The trade aged terribly with Samuel struggling in his few months in New York while Dykstra and McDowell eventually took off with the Phillies. Most questionable of all was why the Mets thought they needed Samuel. He spent most of his career as a second baseman only to recently become a center fielder. He wasn’t even that great of a hitter. He was a strikeout machine with league leading totals from 1984-1987.

Dykstra could’ve been a perfectly acceptable center fielder for the Mets well into the 1990s. They pulled the ripcord far too soon and took on an experiment the Phillies began.

The only thing Samuel did well was steal bases. He swiped 31 for the Mets in 86 games played. It hardly made up for his .228/.299/.300 slash line. New York quickly tried to erase this deal by trading Samuel the following offseason to the Los Angeles Dodgers.