My patience is wearing thin with the self-justification and hypocrisy of the stat zombies

Joe at Statistician Magician sent me this bit of “ha-ha, we told you!!!” about J.J. Putz after the fact from stat zombie Dave Cameron. (I’m not bothering to check, but did the zombies rip the Putz trade when it was announced?) Cameron, with the assistance of the always infallible hindsight (except when the stat zombies discuss Paul DePodesta’s tenure as Dodgers GM, which they inexplicably still defend) has unloaded on the Mets for daring to try and upgrade their bullpen by acquiring a former All Star closer to be their set-up man. Here’s the relevant quotes as Cameron, like any stat zombie who’s been bullied and abused, kicks the guy when he’s down:

Today’s news that J.J. Putz has undergone surgery on his right elbow and will miss the next two months should come as a shock to no one. We talked about his obvious health problems a few weeks into the season, and the only surprise is that it took this long for the Mets to put him under the knife.

They didn’t give up any future stars in the deal, but once again, trading youth for relief pitching fails to pan out. I’m pretty sure the Mets would love to have Jason Vargas, Mike Carp, and Ezequiel Carrera back, at the very least. When you give up seven guys, odds are one or two are going to come back to haunt you.

  The Mets trade for a guy in Putz who was just about unhittable as recently as 2007, pitched quite well down the stretch in 2008, was intended to be their set-up man this year, and just happened to have a recurrence of his elbow issues and you’re going to sit there and reference Jason Vargas and Endy Chavez as reasons that it was a bad deal? Jason Vargas? Endy Chavez?

  I’m curious if Putz had pitched through his elbow pain and pitched well, would we be hearing this indignation of “we knew it!” Would we be hearing people of this kind saying the Mets made a mistake in dealing Vargas, Chavez, Aaron Heilman, Joe Smith and three minor leaguers?

  Did anyone look at how Vargas pitched for the Mets and the Marlins before requiring surgery on, guess what, a bone spur? Or notice that he had the now-famous torn hip labrum and didn’t pitch at all for the Mets organization in 2008?

  Vargas was serviceable as a rookie in 2005 with the Marlins; he was nothing short of hideous in the majors and minors in both 2006 and 2007 and I can promise you one thing, his positive results in for the Mariners this year are not gonna last because the American League teams will figure him out and start punishing him, sooner rather than later. If you’d like to find something about which to give Mets GM Omar Minaya a hard time in regards to Vargas, then acquiring him at all in a trade that sent Matt Lindstrom and his 100-mph fastball to the Marlins is more than enough; not sending him away in this trade.

  Endy Chavez? Chavez is probably the best defensive outfielder in baseball and a good guy, but Jeremy Reed is a suitable replacement for him and Chavez barely played for the Mets after Jerry Manuel took over as manager. He doesn’t hit enough to be a regular player and, much like Reed, will be a defensive replacement more than anything else. Was trading him such a gaffe? Are the Mets problems boiling down to not having Endy Chavez when he wouldn’t have been playing anyway?

  Heilman had to get out of New York and even after the Mariners dealt him to the Cubs for Garrett Olson, he’s pitched about as poorly as he did for the Mets. Olson? He’s been rotten as a starter and the assertion that he “has shown the potential to be a useful LH reliever” is the last vestiges of the stat zombie pulling an opinion out of his ass in the hopes that no one will check out their veracity. Olson as a lefty reliever? His relevant career platoon splits are the following: lefties have hit .312 against him with a .400 on base percentage; righties have hit .306 against him with a .388 OBP. At least he’s consistent——he gets shelled by both. The Mariners can know what to expect. And who knows what’s going to happen with the minor leaguers?

  It’s like beating a piñata to take a trade that hasn’t worked out as planned and rip it retrospectively. If an idea is a sound one, but fails, does it then become a bad idea or one that just didn’t work? It’s not like the Mets gave up Fernando Martinez or any of their top prospects to get Putz; they gave up some filler and no one knows what the Mets will look like if they get Putz and Billy Wagner back healthy in August. It could be the equivalent of two major trades to bolster the bullpen if they can hang around striking distance of a playoff spot until then. Ripping the deal now is just piling on as a method of proving one’s own point that wasn’t provable to begin with unless there was a convenient manipulation of facts and selective memory.