Estrada was a backup catcher who'd played 1 big-league game, for the Mets in '71, and never appeared in another. No loss there. Rose had also reached the majors for 1 game with the '71 Mets, put up a 1-4 record for the '72 Angels, and by April 1974 had appeared in the majors for the last time. No loss there.
Stanton turned out to be a good player, putting up OPS+ seasons of 110, 116 and 123, before slumping a bit in 1976, and being left unprotected in the expansion draft. Taken by the Seattle Mariners, he put up an OPS+ of 130 in 1977, before an injury ended his career the next season at just 32 years old.
We all know what happened to Ryan: He found his control with the Angels in 1972. He set records for strikeouts in a game (19, since broken), a season (383 in 1973, still stands) and a career (5,714, still stands). He pitched 7 no-hitters. He won 324 games, 295 of them after leaving the Mets. And we know what happened to Fregosi: He got hurt, was never the same player again, and is now better known as a manager, having gone back to the Angels and leading them to their 1st postseason appearance, in 1979 -- he was only 37, and could still have been a productive player -- and then leading the Philadelphia Phillies to a Pennant in 1993.
This was just 8 days after the New York Yankees traded Stan Bahnsen to the Chicago White Sox for Rich McKinney. That remains one of the worst trades in Yankee history, but it turned out to not be even the worst New York baseball trade of the month.
Why did the Mets do something so stupid? If you know your baseball history, then you've heard the case for the prosecution. Can there possibly be a case for the defense?
Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame the Mets for Trading Nolan Ryan for Jim Fregosi
5. Jim Fregosi. At this point, there was nothing wrong with wanting a healthy Jim Fregosi on your team. He would be just 30 years old on Opening Day 1972, had been an American League All-Star 6 times, won a Gold Glove in 1967, and, until slumping to 89 in 1971, had never had an OPS+ (on-base percentage + slugging percentage, in relation to the league average) lower than 108 in his first 8 full seasons in the majors, peaking at 141 in 1964.
His highest batting average had been .290, in 1967; peak home runs, 22, and peak runs batted in, 82, both in 1970. In 1968, he led the AL in triples with 13. The franchise was just 11 seasons old at that point, but Fregosi was, without a doubt, the greatest player the Angels had yet had.
Clearly, what the Mets needed to do was make Harrelson a backup, a "defensive replacement." Or maybe the Mets could move him to 3rd base, where 1969 starter Wayne Garrett had badly tailed off, and incumbent starter Bob Aspromonte was at the end of the line. (Bob was a Brooklyn native, now best known as the last active player who had played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was also the brother of the somewhat better Ken Aspromonte.)
Instead, the Mets kept Harrelson at short, and moved Fregosi to 3rd. At first, it seemed to work, but then Fregosi got hurt. He appeared in only 101 games that season, finishing the season with only 32 RBIs and an OPS+ of just 89, and was never the same again. His 382 plate appearances that season would be far and away more than he'd ever have again.
Between the ages of 21 and 28, Jim Fregosi was, statistically speaking, similar to Alan Trammell, the longtime Detroit Tiger shortstop who is now in the Baseball Hall of Fame. But between the ages of 29 and 36, Fregosi was just another broken-down player.
4. Joan Payson. The owner of the Mets trusted her chairman, M. Donald Grant, to make the team's personnel decisions. After the 1973 World Series, Grant began breaking up their "dynasty." Keep in mind, this man not only traded Seaver and Dave Kingman away on the same day, but he used Ryan (and his wife! and Seaver's wife, too) as an excuse to lowball Seaver on contract talks.
Mrs. Payson offered little oversight over Grant's decisions. In contrast to Dan Topping and Del Webb, who would occasionally overrule George Weiss' decisions with the Yankees in the 1950s, she let Grant do whatever he wanted. After she died in 1975, her daughter, Lorinda de Roulet, continued this policy, until she finally fired him in 1978.
So, chances are, keeping Nolan Ryan beyond the 1971 season would have meant giving him up well before 1984.
3. Nolan Ryan -- As He Was Then. At the time of the trade, he was a month and a half short of his 25th birthday. He had a career won-lost record of 29-38. Not good, especially when you consider that the Mets had won 100 games in 1969, 83 in 1970 and 83 again in 1971.
He struck out a lot of batters, but also walked a lot, giving him a WHIP (Walks and Hits, divided by Innings Pitched) of almost 1.6 in '71. His ERA was nearly 4, not good in the NL of the time, which was pitching-friendly with a lot of concrete multipurpose oval stadiums (3 new ones in the preceding season and a half), and, of course, no designated hitter.
With Ryan having been disappointing thus far, and with Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Gary Gentry and a somewhat-still-effective Ray Sadecki in their rotation, the Mets could afford to let Ryan go. He was expendable. Trade bait. Or so it seemed at the time.
2. It Might Not Have Mattered in the Short Term. The 2 biggest questions in Met history are, "What if Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry hadn't fallen victim to drugs?" and, "What if the Mets had never traded Nolan Ryan?"
The answers to both questions are uncomfortable. After all, Doc and Darryl had injuries that cut their careers shorter than they should have been, and those would probably have happened even without substance abuse. And having Ryan might not have helped the Mets much.
Met fans see a rotation with Ryan and Tom Seaver as being unbeatable from 1972 onward. But would it have been? From 1972 until 1983, the Mets only got close to a National League Eastern Division title once, in 1973. They actually did win it, although with the worst record any Division title winner has ever had, 82-79. Then they won the NL Championship Series over the Cincinnati Reds. They didn't need Ryan to do that.
The key is the World Series, against the defending World Champion Oakland Athletics. The Mets took a 3-2 lead, with Games 6 and (if necessary) 7 still to play in Oakland. Yogi Berra, then the Mets' manager, gambled by starting Seaver in Game 6, on 3 days' rest. It didn't work: The A's won. That left him with Jon Matlack as his best available Game 7 starter, and he had 1 bad inning (the 3rd), and the A's won.
If the Mets still had Ryan, they could have started him in Game 7. Or, depending on how Yogi set up the rotation, Ryan in Game 6 and, if necessary, Seaver in Game 7.
But let's look at Ryan's postseason record. It's mixed. He saved the Mets' bacon in Game 3 of the '69 NLCS against the Atlanta Braves, and did so again in Game 3 of the World Series against the Baltimore Orioles -- all this before he became NOLAN RYAN.
After that, he next appeared in postseason play in 1979, and while he pitched well for the Angels, it wasn't enough, as they lost the game and the Pennant to the Orioles.
In 1980, now with his hometown Houston Astros, he blew the Pennant-clinching Game 5 of the NLCS, at the Astrodome no less, enabling the Phillies to win their 1st Pennant in 30 years, and then their 1st World Championship in 98 years of trying. At that point in their history, blowing a Pennant to the Phillies was like losing to Suzanne Somers on Jeopardy! (This was when she was playing Chrissy Snow on Three's Company, well before she proved her smarts as a fitness expert and a businesswoman. She wasn't a dumb blonde, she just played one on TV.)
In the strike-forced Division Series of 1981, Ryan pitched well for the Astros, but in the process, he only got a split of 2 decisions against the Los Angeles Dodgers. And he made just one other postseason appearance, in the 1986 NLCS with the Astros, losing Game 2, and pitching well but not getting the decision in a Game 5 his team lost... to the Mets.
And even in 1973, the year the Mets won the Pennant and Ryan fanned a still-standing record of 383, he also led the AL in walks with 162. In fact, he led the League in walks 8 times (6 in the AL, 2 in the NL). He also gave up 18 homers. He was hard to hit, but when he got hit, he got hit. (Which sounds like something Yogi might say.)
Having a 2nd World Series win since the Yankees' last one in 1962 would have been a huge bragging point for Met fans until the Yankees started winning again in 1977. Until 1996, they could say that, since 1962, we've won just as many titles as you have (2). But, if you'll pardon my mixing of my sports metaphors, but having Ryan in the 1973 World Series to pitch to "The Swingin' A's" of Reggie Jackson, Joe Rudi, Sal Bando, Gene Tenace and Deron Johnson was no slam dunk.
But there would be other chances, right? Having Ryan would certainly improve those chances, right?
1. It Might Not Have Mattered in the Long Term. From 1974 to 1983, the Mets were not in one single Pennant race, and it's hard to say how much difference Ryan would have made then.
Then there's the Mets' glory years from 1984 to 1990. Then again, for all their talk, there wasn't a whole lot of glory. Could Ryan, who pitched remarkably well even until he was 44 in 1991, have made a difference there? The Mets finished 6 1/2 games behind the Chicago Cubs in 1984, so Ryan wouldn't have made the difference there.
In 1985, the Mets finished 3 games behind the St. Louis Cardinals, but Ryan was 10-12 with a 3.80 ERA. If he makes 3 games' difference, do the Mets beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS? Maybe, the Dodgers had Tom Niedenfuer in their pen; Jack Clark hitting a Pennant-clincher in the top of the 9th in Game 6 wasn't a surprise, but Ozzie Smith hitting a walkoff in the bottom of the 9th of Game 5 was. I can certainly imagine Niedenfuer giving up homers to Lenny Dykstra in Game 5 (or maybe Lenny still hits his in Game 3) and Gary Carter in Game 6.
The Series, against the Kansas City Royals? I don't know, because the Cards did lose, and if Cardinal fans still curse the name of umpire Don Denkinger over a quarter of a century later, what would Met fans say if that same call were made? I think the Mets win the '85 Pennant, but lose the Series.
Ryan would have made no difference in 1986. How could he? The Mets won the World Series. The only difference is that the Mets beat the Reds in the NLCS, since the Astros don't have Ryan. (Then again, the Astros won the NL West by 10, so maybe they win it anyway.)
In 1987, at age 40, Ryan led the NL in ERA and strikeouts, but had an 8-16 record, because the Astros remembered that they are the Houston Astros: Great pitching, good defense, couldn't hit the ground if they fell off a ladder.
The Mets finished 2nd to the Cards again, 3 games back. Ryan definitely would have made a difference here, and the Mets would probably have beaten the San Francisco Giants for the Pennant. But the Minnesota Twins were not going to lose any World Series games in the Metrodome. Nobody beat the Twins in the Dome in October. Nobody. (Except, as it turned out, the 2003, '04 and '09 Yankees, who clinched 3 ALDS in that disgraceful facility.) So the Mets reach their 3rd straight Series, but win only 1.
In 1988, the Mets lost the NLCS to the Dodgers in Game 7... or, rather, they lost it in Game 4, when Mike Scioscia took Gooden deep in the 9th. The Mets started, in the 7 games, Gooden, David Cone, Ron Darling, Gooden, Sid Fernandez, Coney, Darling. Ryan had a good year, but I'm not sure where he starts. In all honesty, I can't say with any certainty that he makes a difference in this series.
In 1989, his 1st season with the Texas Rangers, Ryan had his last big season in terms of wins, 16, for an 83-win team. The Mets finished 2nd to the Cubs again, 6 games back. Maybe with Ryan, now 42 but still effective, the Mets don't make that dumb trade for Frank Viola, and win the Division.
But I don't think they win the Pennant, unless there's another dumb trade they don't make, Kevin Mitchell to the San Diego Padres for Kevin McReynolds. Mitchell's trade, soon after, from the Padres to the Giants made the Giants a postseason team in '87 and '89, and they beat the Cubs soundly in the NLCS; they would have done the same to the Mets.
In 1990, the Mets finished 2nd, 4 games behind the Pirates. Ryan had a pretty good season, and if he'd been in the rotation instead of the sinking-fast El Sid, they might have won the Division. On the other hand, as I said, if they still had Ryan, they wouldn't have traded for Viola, who won 20 in his one good season for the Mets. No, having Ryan at this point probably hurts them.
In 1991, Ryan's last effective season -- as a fastball pitcher at age 44! How come no one ever tested him for steroids? -- the Mets collapsed, finishing 20 1/2 back of the Pirates. Having Ryan wouldn't have helped. Having him in the disastrous '92 and '93 seasons, Ryan's last 2, wouldn't have helped, either.
So Ryan might have helped them win 3 more Division titles (1985, '87 and '89), and 2 more Pennants (1985 and '87), but it's hard to see how he wins them any more World Series (unless you count 1973, and you can't count on that).
VERDICT: Not Guilty. M. Donald Grant made a lot of bad decisions as the Mets' de facto owner, and trading Ryan for Fregosi is the one that sticks out the most. But, just as Harry Frazee had reasons to let Babe Ruth go from the Boston Red Sox in 1919, there was more to the move than meets the eye. It would be fairer to say that both Frazee in the early 1920s and Grant in the 1970s broke up their winning teams, each with many bad decisions, too soon.
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