Another Stellar Move by the Mets [David Stefanini]

I'm hear to report yet another stellar move pulled by the New York Mets. They have traded outfielder Ryan Church to the Braves for outfielder Jeff Francouer.

In other words the Mets got rid of a decent hitting OF for a guy who strikes out a lot, and who posses little power. Francouer is batting a whopping .250 with 5 HRs this season. The one thing I can say about Francouer is he has a cannon for an arm. But like that matters with the amount of hits given up by the Met's pitchers.

Lets take a different stance on this trade, maybe the Mets looked to improve on team speed. Francouer has an incredible 5 SB this season whereas Church has 6.

Maybe it was to cut payroll, Francouer is making roughly 3.4 million whereas Church is making 2.8 million.

Okay I'll be serious now, the Mets clearly made this trade to get men on base more often. Francouer has an astronomical .282 OBP whereas Church has .332!

The only thing I can see positive in this trade is that Francouer is just 25 years old with a ton of upside. He seems to have a chance to develop great power and is a very good defensive RF. However, Church was a really good defender as well and he was only 30 years old with plenty of baseball left...

I took the time to run Church's numbers since he came off the DL and here they are: .291/.335/.401. Now lets compare those to Francouer's numbers for the season .250/.282/.352.

To keep going as why this trade is so great for the Mets lets see their corner outfielders. They now have 3 right handed batters with Sheffield, Tatis, and Francouer.

Great job Minaya! This is exactly why I'm a Mets fan....

If anyone has any idea why this trade was made, in terms of the Mets benefiting, in any other way than I have mentioned please feel free to leave a comment. I really want to hear how this is a good thing. This is what Minaya has to say about it, “This had nothing to do with not liking Ryan Church, but, one thing we like about Francoeur is the amount of games he plays."