Imagine if Mets had Yankee-style injuries

A pitcher pitches an inning with a broken elbow. Another pitcher suffers a gruesome injury jumping on a trampoline. A third pitcher, traded for the team's top prospect, goes on the DL. Sounds like the Mets. But it's the Yankees.

The Mets have a well-deserved reputation for screwing up medical matters, but the Yankees have had their own woes lately.  The difference is that nobody is saying "Same old Yankees." Not yet, anyway.

On  Saturday, Cesar Cabral, who was on track to win a job in the Yankees bullpen, pitched an inning with a broken elbow. Now he's on the 60-day DL.

In 2009, Jon Niese appeared to injure his hamstring making a play at first. The crack Met medical team decided to let him try a practice pitch. I still cringe at the sight of Niese crumpling to the ground, now with a completely torn hamstring. 

If Cabral had been a Met, we probably would have had photoshopped pictures of the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail on the mound in a Met uniform while Met trainers agree with him that the loss of his arms and legs is "just a flesh wound."

After missing most of last season, former Met phenom Ike Davis has seen his comeback complicated by something called Valley Fever. The general reaction? Only the Mets could have a player come down with a disease most people have never heard of.

After missing most of last season, former Yankee phenom Joba Chamberlain has seen his comeback complicated by an injury caused by jumping on a trampoline. The general reaction? What a good dad!

When the Mets traded top prospect Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano, they were accused of negligence in failing to realize that Zambrano had a damaged arm.

When the Yankees traded top prospect Jesus Montero for Michael Pineda, manager Joe Girardi described it as "great news" when an MRI showed only shoulder tendinitis.

When reporters noted that Phil Hughes was also diagnosed with shoulder tendinitis last year, and he missed three months and finished the season with a 5.79 ERA, here was Girardi's response:

"They both got tendinitis, but I wouldn't necessarily say they're similar [injuries]," Girardi said. "There's a lot of parts to that shoulder."

Girardi's rationalizing about Pineda's injury reminds me of how some people said that Johan Santana would make it back faster than Chien-Ming Wang and others who had the same injury because all injuries are different.

Of course, all injuries are different. Pineda might miss much less time than Hughes.

Or he might miss more time.

It's way too early to judge the Pineda-Montero trade. And unlike the Kazmir debacle, this trade looked like a good deal for the New York team, or at least a fair deal, depending on how upset one was to see Montero go.
 
But it's fair to say that the trade could look better as of now. And it's fair to say that Mets are no longer alone when it comes to medical misadventures.

The Mets traded two of 2010's top three sluggers - in the same deal!

July 30, 2004, is a date that lives in infamy for the Mets, thanks to the Scott Kazmir trade. But the Mets made another deal that day, and that trade may turn out to be even worse.

Toronto's Jose Bautista is currently tied with the White Sox's Paul Konerko for the major league lead in homers with 14. Baltimore's Ty Wigginton is one behind them with 13 homers. No one else has more than twelve. Both Bautista and Wigginton are former Mets, and the Mets, who could use some home run punch, let them go in the same regrettable trade.

At the 2004 trading deadline, the Mets packaged Wigginton and Bautista along with pitching prospect Matt Peterson to acquire Kris Benson and Jeff Keppinger.

The biggest name in this trade was Benson, who won four games the rest of the way in 2004 and ten games in 2005. But Benson - and his controversial wife Anna - were traded to Baltimore in January 2006 for reliever Jorge Julio and a pitching prospect. Julio got off to a disastrous start with the Mets before he was traded to Arizona four years ago today for Orlando Hernandez.

The Mets could use Keppinger now – he became the Astros’ starting second baseman earlier this season (replacing Kaz Matsui!) and is batting .292 with 15 runs and 17 RBI. Meanwhile, Mets second baseman Luis Castillo is batting .250 with 10 runs and 11 RBI - and facing a possible trip to the DL. But Keppinger was traded in 2006 for Ruben Gotay, who was later waived.

Wigginton, who had 12 homers in 86 games at the time of the trade, went on to average 23 homers a year from 2006-2008.

Bautista has never hit more than 16 homers in a season, but as ESPN's Buster Olney points out, Bautista's homer pace began accelerating at the end of last season, when he hit 10 after September 7.

Bautista was only a Met for a few hours - he had been acquired earlier in the day from Kansas City for catching prospect Justin Huber. And it has taken Bautista years to come into his own. Wigginton is generally regarded more as a utility player.

But if Bautista and Wigginton end up each hitting 25-30 homers this season (and they are halfway there in late May), the Mets will have nothing to show for what they gave up.

Except for one player.

For Kazmir and two of the top three sluggers in baseball this season so far, all the 2010 Mets have to show for these disastrous deals is the pitching prospect they got from the Orioles along with Julio for Benson.

That prospect was John Maine.

Some people think the Mets should try to get Roy Oswalt from the Astros. It's worth remembering how it turned out six years ago when the Mets went after veteran starting pitchers at the trade deadline.