Learn From Mets' Mistakes

Five days ago, Brewer’s All-Star Ryan Braun told the media he thinks the Brewers need to make a trade. Milwaukee’s GM Doug Melvin responded kindly by saying that Braun needed to shut his face (perhaps not in those exact words, but essentially).

While Melvin could have ignored reporters and just let the comment die, his fighting back showed the GM at least wasn’t considering the far worse alternative — pushing the big red panic button up in his office.

You see, most people think the phrase “panic button” is just an expression commonly used in the English language.

But in baseball, GM’s actually have a physical panic button in their office. It’s true, my friend heard it from his cousin who read it online in a blog by a guy who swears he thought of becoming a major league scout once.

Either way, GM’s tend to push this button when media and fan pressure becomes too great, and the panic button bestows upon them a trade that could only make sense to the most warped baseball mind. 

The Royal’s operation is in fact run by a monkey who sits there and hits the button when he isn’t flinging feces around, and former Mets' GM Steve Phillip’s used to get so confused he would hit the panic button just to decide on what to eat for lunch.

This year we have already seen evidence of this with the Mets’ trade of outfielder Ryan Church for Atlanta’s Jeff Francoeur.

Only a very panicked team — which the free-falling Mets’ are — could talk themselves into the free-swinging Francoeur.

Here is a quick comparison of stats:

            Francoeur 2008 -             .239/.294/.359, 72 OPS+

Church 2008 -             .276/.346/.439, 106 OPS+

Francoeur 2009 -             .250/.282/.352, 68 OPS+

            Church 2009 -             .280/.332/.375, 88 OPS+

While Church is no Ryan Braun (or even Mike Cameron for that matter), he clearly has more value than Francoeur.

Francoeur has struck out at least 111 times in each of his full three seasons in the big leagues, but even more troubling, his homerun totals have dropped from 29 to 19 to 11 to a lowly five this year.

Mets’ GM Omar Minaya tried to justify the trade by claiming his young age and boasting of the “energy” he would bring.

"Plate discipline has been an issue with Jeff," Minaya said to SI.com. "I do believe because he's 25 years old, I think that he can improve that."

What evidence is their of that? Francoeur has never walked more than 42 times in a season and whined that he was “embarrassed” last year when he was demoted to AA-ball to work on his swing.

The only explanation is the Mets’ inexplicably still think of Francoeur as the five-toll prospect he was once dubbed by the Sports Illustrated cover, and the New York fans scare the bejeezus out of Minaya. Combine those two with the scary looking panic button, and you have a $3.3 million outfielder who has no power, plate discipline, ability to hit for average or speed (career high of 5 stolen bases in a season).

The point of this all isn’t to humiliate the Mets’ (they do a decent job of that with their play), but that making a trade for the hell of it usually just lands you a bigger shovel for the hole you keep digging. The cliché, “if you aren’t moving forward, you’re going backwards”, is just that, an old cliché.

This is something Brewers’ fans (and the Hammering Hebrew I suppose) need to keep in mind as the Brewer’s keep slumping. Making a trade just to shake things up has as much chance of success as Francoeur seeing ball four.

Melvin has done a good job assembling a strong core of talent. He got the Crew to the playoffs last year. Let’s put faith in the man who helped Milwaukee out the lonely cellar where dwell the Pirates and Reds.