The Mets also gave up Jason Vargas, Maikel Cleto, and Ezequiel Carrera.

The Mets also gave up Jason Vargas, Maikel Cleto, and Ezequiel Carrera.

What are they trading? 300 players?

I might be biased, but Guti would be a Gold Glove candidate in center if given the chance.

Are they all starters on the Mariners?

Two closers? Guess that is better than zero.

Just got an email about this from the Mariners' MLB site. That's a pretty large trade.

If Putz and K-Rod pitch as well as Zips says they should, the Met bullpen should be pretty good.

It sounds like Minaya gave up a ridiculous number of actual baseball players to get this done, but he was able to do it without giving up any of the young players I'd really be upset to see included. Heilman and Smith might be good the next couple years, but not very likely to combine to be as good as Putz. I could see Vargas getting a handful of opportunities to earn a spot in the back end of someone's rotation or Carp possibly becoming Doug Mientkiewicz if he's lucky. I don't know anything about Cleto or Carrera. Information would be appreciated.

A team can only make trades like this so many times before they are completely out of major league usable depth in the minors, but for now I like this.

A team can only make trades like this a few times before becoming unable to field any minor league teams.

If Gutierrez can post an OPS+ of 90 in CF, then I've got to think the M's would give him 500 ABs.

I like Smith better as a ROOGY long-term better but Green as more of a general use reliever.

I wish this were the case, but Green seems exceptionally lousy against lefties as well. And I don't really see why a team has to carry a ROOGY, just in general.

That said, I agree that Smith=Green and Endy=Reed (I think I'd slightly prefer Smith to Green and Reed to Endy; still cancels out), and so it's Heilman, Carp and Vargas for Putz. I'm ok with that, given all three of those guys have huge question marks and Putz seems very reliable -- great in '06, super-tremendously-great in '07, and pretty darn good after he came back from the injury last year (27.1 IP, 33 K, 11 BB, 3 HR). It's not terribly difficult to envision it being a bad long-term exchange of talent for the Mets, especially if Vargas bounces back which I don't think is out of the question at all, but overall, I still think you do it.

I'm completely lost as to who the Indians ended up with.

OK, whom

"The Indians trade Gutierrez and unnamed prospects for Valbuena and Smith."

Well, hell, ya gotta put that sentence in its own paragraph or bold a name or two if you expect me to catch on! :-)

And unless the two unnamed prospects are me and Levski, that doesn't look like a good deal for the Indians. Not that Gutierrez is great shakes (he can go get 'em though).

This is quite a good trade for the Mets.

It's still early, but early returns are not good for the Mets.

1: Putz, sucks and is hurt (and he probably sucked because he was hurt)
2: Sean Green has been terrible (basically I cringed everytime either Putz or Green were warming up)
3: Reed has been an OK sub.

Jason Vargas has pitched very well for Seattle
Smith and Heilman have admittedly been bad
Endy Chavez has been, well Endy Chavez
Mike Carp is playing extremely well in AAA and some prospect maven shave started saying that, gee, maybe he is a real prospect afterall (The Mets had three hitters in AA last year hitting about the same- Carp, Evans and Murphy, Carp was the youngest of the 3, had the best career record, and so was the one dumped- despite what Sam M says, I think it's a good chance the Mets dumped the wrong one)
and Ezequiel Carrera is hitting .351/.473/.410 in AA.

and Sean Henry, a guy who was traded away for Jeff Conine's carcass is hitting .315/.363/.497 in AA...

Wow, JP, I never even bothered to see who the Mets gave up for Conine, because I assumed he was useless. That is a horrible trade. Sure, it's almost certainly not going to really affect the team going forward, but why do that? Maybe I still just haven't recovered from the Jason Bay trade, but trades like that piss me off, no matter how insignificant they seem.