Yesterday, the Mets seemingly decided to mortgage their future for the hopes of having their below .500 team back into a wild-card spot. The front office traded their best two pitching prospects, their best catching prospect and a promising and energetic young player who was their everyday third-baseman earlier this month for two mediocre pitchers with career ERAs above 4.20:

[I]n the span of minutes, the Mets had transformed their rotation for 2004 and beyond, landing righthanders Kris Benson and Victor Zambrano despite a thin starting pitching market. The deals came at the expense of Ty Wigginton and pitching prospects Scott Kazmir and Matt Peterson, the jewels of the system, whom principal owner Fred Wilpon had pledged to build around as recently as spring training…

The Mets spoke all winter about a new-found philosophy to build from within, rather than trade away talent and overpay for free agents. They had pledged not to deviate from their plan. And then came yesterday.

Here is a blunter assessment:

Simply put, the Mets got hosed. And even worse, they got hosed when their shot of making the postseason is virtually nil, falling seven games back with a loss to Atlanta last night. They had no reason to make these trades at this time and they gave up Scott Kazmir, someone who has more potential than almost any pitching prospect in baseball, someone who could have become a bona fide #1 ace or a lights-out, wham-bam, thank-ya-ma'am closer.

Maybe this will end up being a great series of trades. Maybe the Mets will end up smelling like roses if Kazmir, Matt Peterson, and Justin Huber all flame out in the majors. But the bottom line is that this is one of the riskiest gambles the Mets have ever made and the Devil Rays have to be feeling pretty good right now.

I am not at all happy and a lot of other Met fans appear to feel the same way (see here for more). I suspect the Crank has somewhat similar views.

It is worth noting that minor league pitching prospects rarely blossom into great major leaguers, but sometimes, of course, they do. Giving up both Peterson and Kazmir increases the probability that you are giving away at least one future star whose career will come back to haunt you. I also liked Wigginton and thought that, while the logic behind offering him as trade bait was understandable, it was far from imperative. Any creative manager should have been able to find a use for him even with David Wright in the majors. Throwing in Huber, another highly touted prospect, is also discouraging, even if the catching position at the major league level temporarily looks occupied. Benson and Zambrano are decent fourth and fifth starters, I suppose, but, unless you have boundless faith in Rick Peterson, they have very visible ceilings on what they will accomplish and are in the middle of mediocre careers.

Jason Mastaitis, quoted above, may have said it best with this line:

You know what the Mets just became? The New York Knicks!

Ouch.