The Futility Infielder

Pulling the Trigger on Payton

Nobody hates sharing their first name with a fundamentally unsound ballplayer toiling in the same city more than I do. So I let out a good whoop when the Mets finally, mercifully pulled the trigger on a deal which sent Jay Payton to Colorado on Wednesday.

I never understood why the Mets made so much fuss about Payton. Despite his minor-league hitting prowess (Payton tore up A, AA, and AAA pitching his first three years as a pro), he's been an extremely mediocre major-league hitter. And whatever skill he's shown as an above-average centerfielder is undone by his baserunning antics, which stand out on a team with two headless chickens in the outfield and on the basepaths in Roger Cedeno and Timo Perez. I may as well watch Little League.

Week after week, month after month, I read about how Jay Payton was the sticking point in some blockbuster deal the Mets had going for Junior Griffey or Gary Sheffield or Babe... well, maybe not Babe Ruth. Those deals never materialized, of course. If a reluctance to part with Payton really is what did them in, then Mets GM Steve Phillips should be sentenced to watch his overpaid, underwhelming ballclub for an eternity, or at least the length of Mo Vaughn's contract.

Injuries and a million elbow surgeries delayed Payton's big-league career until 27, an age when ballplayers tend to peak statistically. Three years down the road, Payton hasn't advanced very much; we've already seen his upside. A red-hot July did enough to camouflage his decline that it made sense to deal him. That he netted only a middle- to back-of-the-rotation starter in John Thomson (who's decent enough, but so fragile that he's apparently in the Under the Knife Hall of Fame next to Moises Alou and Ken Griffey, Jr.) shouldn't surprise anybody besides Phillips, Rockies GM Dan O'Dowd, and Jay Payton's mother, all of whom have higher opinions of their Jay than I do.

Here are some stats for Payton:

                   AVG   OBP   SLG   PA

2000             .291  .331  .447  529

2001             .255  .298  .371  386

2002 (pre-July)  .259  .311  .383  216

2002 (July)      .351  .402  .500   81

2002 (total)     .284  .336  .415  297

Looking at these, who do you think the real Jay Payton is, the mediocrity who put in 1000+ plate appearances over 2 1/2 years, hitting a thin .273/.316/.407, or the guy who tore up the NL in July once the Mets had flatlined themselves out of Wild Card contention? Caveat emptor.

ESPN's Rob Neyer has a good piece about the general lousiness of the Mets' outfield, and points out that in Payton, the Mets traded their most productive outfielder. I say that if Payton's the best you've got, you might as well pack in some dynamite, blow shit up and start over. I'd shiver at the prospect of Perez taking over centerfield if I didn't have good money to bet on the "over" for collisions with Cedeno. *That* will be fun to watch.

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This page has taken quite a jump recently in terms of traffic, enough to make July the busiest in this site's short history, and 50% busier than the previoius six months' average. I know that my coverage of the All-Star Game Weekend had something to do with it, but a bit of networking with my fellow webloggers helped as well. I'd like to give big thank-you shout-outs to David Pinto's Baseball Musings, Geoff Young's Ducksnorts, John Bonnes' TwinsGeek.com, John Perricone's Only Baseball Matters, and of course Pete Sommers' Baseball News Blog, all of which have brought this site to their readers' attention recently. These are some really smart weblogs, and I encourage anyone reading this to check them out.