I did not see this one coming. Not by a long shot.

It’s currently being reported that the New York Mets have dealt OF prospect and legendary rapper Lastings Milledge to the Washington Nationals in exchange for catcher Brian Schneider and outfielder Ryan Church.

It doesn’t come as much of a surprise that Milledge has been dealt. His name had been bandied about in many trade rumors, often involving the Oakland A’s (either for Joe Blanton or as part of a package for Danny Haren). Now I have no inside knowledge of the Mets brass’ collective thought process, but to me this signals that Billy Beane had either soured on Milledge or was never as interested as reporters thought. If the Mets had a shot to upgrade their starting pitching via Oakland by trading Milledge, one would have to assume that Omar Minaya would have saved this bullet for the right time. Instead, Milledge is going to Washington where he should see a lot of playing time. Most scouts seem to still view him as an above-average outfielder in the future, if not future All-Star.

So why did the Mets do it?

First off, there’s something else here. In the last week or so, the Mets acquired three catchers - they resigned Ramon Castro to a two-year deal, traded for Johnny Estrada, and have now also acquired Schneider. Unless they’re planning on employing the first ever catching (righty-switch-lefty) trio, they most likely will be looking to deal one of the three.

But the bigger piece here is Ryan Church. I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I actually like Church. Despite playing in a massive pitcher’s park, he still managed to attain a .813 OPS in 2007. In fact, he slugged over .500 away from RFK. I don’t expect his numbers to get that much better since Shea is just as much a pitcher’s park. But what he does offer the Mets lineup is the lefty hitter they’ve been lacking since letting Shawn Green hit the market. Church should slot in as the #2, 7 or 8 hitter in the Mets lineup (I’m not much of a fan of the idea of Luis Castillo in the second spot). While he had a .349 OBP in 2007, he performed better in that department in ‘05 and ‘06, so I expect him to bounce back into the .360 OBP level, which should be good enough to hit near the top of the order. Plus, he has much more pop than Castillo (who doesn’t?). Church should improve the Mets offense in the short term. Defensively, he’s nothing special, but he isn’t bad either. While he played mostly in left in Washington, he’ll most likely be a RFer for the Mets.

Overall, I think it’s pretty ballsy of Omar Minaya to trade Milledge to a team within his own division. Mets fans will get to see L-Millz 18 times in the 2008 regular season wearing that Nationals uniform and they’ll judge for themselves if he ever was going to be a star. I’m pretty confident that this (assuming that trading Milledge for good pitching was simply not an available option) improves the Mets chances in 2008. But we’ll all have to wait and see to know if this trade is a big mistake.

P.S: I expect the fans of Flushing to immediately want to burn Minaya for this deal. The press and blogs have talked SO MANY times about dealing Milledge for pitching that I think lots of people will look at this trade and think that Minaya took Church/Schneider over someone like Haren or Johan Santana. Me? I’m pretty sure that had such a possibility existed, Omar would have never looked in Washington’s direction.

UPDATE: Well, not really an “update”, but a clarification - I was just re-reading this and I think it comes off sounding a bit too positive from the Mets’ perspective. So instead of writing this over again, I’m just going to add that I’m not exactly thrilled with this trade. It’s not as bad as it seems on the surface, but it’s definitely not good. Just wanted to point this out.

By now we all know Mike Bacsik, the Nationals pitcher who served up home run number 756 to Barry Bonds. But he wasn’t the only one on the field that night. Phillies catcher Chris Coste says he was watching the guy squatting behind Bonds.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Chris Coste talked about the fact that everyone remembers the pitcher who served up the home run, but no one ever remembers the catcher who called for the pitch that resulted in the homer.

“I’ll always know it was Brian Schneider because I was paying attention to it,” Coste said. “To Schneider’s credit, though, his glove was here [inside] and not here [in the middle of the plate].”

Good to know Schneider was savvy enough not to call for a pitch down the middle, even if that’s where the ball ended up.

I was g-chatting with my buddy Alex the other day. We were having an online conversation about Barry Bonds and Alex was saying that he thought the whole * thing is ridiculous…

Me: Letting Bonds get away with using steroids isn’t fair to players like Ken Griffey, Jr., who are clean.

Alex: I think in an ideal world we would have completely clean players records to chase, and the record would really mean the same thing from one generation to the next, but there is such a huge history of cheating in baseball, and different rules of the game for different eras, that I think Roger Maris’s home run season really should have put an end to any nonsense about asterisks or special rules.

Me: But what about Ken Griffey, Jr.!

Alex: it is unfair to Griffey, but baseball records are not about fairness, they are about watching someone do something (regardless of where, how, or why they do it) that is unprecedented.

I think Alex is right. You wanna talk about fair? Here’s something I dug up while reading about Babe Ruth on Wikipedia:

Another rules change that affected Ruth was the method used by umpires to judge potential home runs when the batted ball left the field near a foul pole. Before 1931, i.e through most of Ruth’s most productive years, the umpire called the play based on the ball’s final resting place “when last seen”. Thus, if a ball went over the fence fair, and curved behind the foul pole, it was ruled foul. Beginning in 1931 and continuing to the present day, the rule was changed to require the umpire to judge based on the point where the ball cleared the fence. Jenkinson’s book (p.374-375) lists 78 foul balls near the foul pole in Ruth’s career, and the research indicates at least 50 of them were likely to have been home runs under the modern rule.

If Ruth had played under the same rules we use today, he would have had about 764 home runs in his career, instead of 715. And Bonds would still be chasing Ruth, rather than about to pass Aaron.

Oh, and here’s an interesting piece that appeared in Editor and Publisher. Michael Witte, an illustrator whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Time, Sports Illustrated and The Wall Street Journal, says that he thinks Bonds’ elbow pad has helped him as much as the steroids. Witte lists six ways the protective device gives Bonds an unfair advantage. Here’s just one of the six:

The apparatus is hinged at the elbow. It is a literal “hitting machine” that allows Bonds to release his front arm on the same plane during every swing. It largely accounts for the seemingly magical consistency of every Bonds stroke.

Crazy stuff!

Long story short, I think we could come up with a million reasons that Bonds 755 home runs aren’t legit. Does that mean we shouldn’t care about the steroids as much? I can’t decide.