I turned on WFAN this afternoon and learned that the Mets had traded Kris Benson to the Orioles for Jorge Julio and John Maine [1].
Then I turned off WFAN and switched to WTF?
What the fudge is Omar doing now? Why are we trading a reasonably reliable mid-rotation starter for a reliever who reportedly gets worse every year and a kid who if he was all that would be of some use to the Orioles?
I've been a Minaya enabler this winter. I wasn't jumping the couch for Xavier Nady [2], but I figured that was a Cameron salary dump and I could live with it. I loved Delgado [3] and Wagner [4] and rather liked Lo Duca [5]. I was fine with Franco [6]. I even rationalized away the acquisition of Duaner Sanchez and Steve Schmoll for Jae Seo [7] as necessary bullpen-bolstering.
But that last trade was predicated on starting pitching being a source of strength and abundance. It doesn't seem to be anymore.
Pedro (toe), Glavine (age), Trachsel (rust), Zambrano (Zambrano) and…Heilman?
Why not? He's all things to all people. In less than a year's time he's been a total washout, a last-ditch option, a surefire starter, an arm with no role, an underused middle reliever, a dominant closer, a prospective lights-out setup man, a chip deluxe to bring Manny Ramirez or Barry Zito or Danys Baez and, if we wait a couple of months, a fusion candidate for governor.
Aaron Heilman is Chauncey Gardiner. He's the man who, by his simple act of Being There [8], has become the empty vessel into which we project our hopes and dreams.
Aaron Heilman is also Aaron Heilman. He's 27 years old and has started 25 games in the big leagues. He threw a scintillating one-hitter [9] last April. He threw a couple of other pretty to very good games in May as a starter. And then he was submerged into the bullpen where he eventually found his niche in the eighth and ninth. Now he is expected to revert to his one-hit form of last spring, ignoring his spotty (to be kind) history as a starter the two previous seasons.
Maybe he's been getting his innings on in the Winter Leagues, though I have to admit I don't put any stock into that stuff since getting excited over Rey Ordoñez nearly winning a batting title one December. It was as a starter that he was drafted No. 1 and it was as a starter that he lived most of his life. Maybe that Don Drysdale arm angle thing will give him the endurance he needs. I liked him as a reliever.
Jorge Julio? Isn't that the guy who gives up lots of hits to the Yankees? I've heard him compared to Armando Benitez [10]. Not so much compared favorably, just compared. The other guy, Maine, I just heard about two or three hours ago.
I'm all for a fortified bullpen. If Julio can be the 1999 first-half Benitez and Sanchez, Bradford and Padilla (remember him?) have their acts together, then Wagner should receive some leads in pretty good condition. But how soon will the Tomato Patch Boys have to start tossing their salads? With a rotation that has gotten both older and less proven these last few weeks, should Omar think about trading Lastings Milledge for a fifth-inning specialist?
I don't mean to elevate Kris Benson to Kris Mathewson just because he's no longer here. I had middling hopes for him when we got him and he pretty much delivered. Benson's dead-arm period lasted about a month last summer. Just about the time his stepping up would've helped matters, he stepped back. He wasn't ever going to be, long-term, what he looked like in the final start of his rookie season [11], but I felt not totally unconfident with him on the mound.
Not the heartiest endorsement, but he was a No. 3 starter, younger than Pedro, Glavine and Trachsel, less Zambranoey than Zambrano. Without a No. 3 starter, as Casey liked to say, you've got a long wait between your second and fourth pitchers.
Anna's gone, too. No great losses there.
Maybe there's something more. The name Barry Zito continues to float. Surely Rick Peterson must be good for something besides luring Chad Bradford to town. Maybe Maine will find himself in New York. Maybe Pelfrey will be here sooner than expected or the rotation will turn into a Soler system. Maybe Jeff Weaver…ah, I don't wanna think about that. Maybe this is just indicative of the way baseball is run these days, scraping salary from the middle of your rotation and rotating relievers around until you feel relatively confident that enough of them will get the job done.
Also, maybe we should remember that this trade comes almost 22 years to the day Frank Cashen blundered Tom Seaver to the White Sox and that seemed like the end of the world. It was 1984, and it was only the beginning.