d'Arnaud Done

It has been a seven year experiment that failed, to put it bluntly. At the end of the 2012 season, the New York Mets made a pretty big deal. On December 16, just two months after R.A. Dickey had won the NL Cy Young Award, the Mets agreed to trade Dickey to the Toronto Blue Jays (along with Josh Thole and Mike Nickeas) in exchange for Travis d'Arnaud, John Buck, Noah Syndergaard and Wuilmer Becerra. Now d'Arnaud was supposed to be the biggest and most valued piece of that deal for the Mets in return for Dickey. Here we sit, almost seven years since the deal was made,m and Travis d'Arnaud time in New York has come to an end. ON Sunday he was designated for assignment.

D’Arnaud spent seven years with the Mets and ended his era in Queens after a year-long recovery from Tommy John surgery. His performance was underwhelming would be putting it mildly. He had a bright future in baseball, which is why the Mets made the big deal to try and land him. But, sadly during his time here in New York, he never hit above .275 for a full season, in fact his single season best was .268 in 2015. Now this year, he had been coming off Tommy John surgery, so you could cut him a little bit of slack. That ran out quick when Travis had gone 2-for-25 with two RBI, two walks and five strikeouts across 10 games this season.

He ends his Mets career as a .242 hitter, with 47 home runs, 164 RBI, 65 doubles and 112 walks over 407 games. Most guys would be happy to put up those kind of power numbers in a single season, and he did it over a full career. He was a slightly above average hitter at best. And to make matters worse this year, his play behind the plate, which was supposed to be a strong suit for Travis, was horrible and can't happen at the big league level. Oh but wait, this gets more interesting.

The Mets had deemed d’Arnaud as the second-best catcher on the club behind Wilson Ramos, this after having Travis miss a year because of the injury. The decision by the team caused a rift between veteran backstop Devin Mesoraco and the ball club. While d’Arnaud was still rehabbing at Mets camp, Mesoraco expected to be on the Mets Opening Day roster as the backup catcher. New York promoted Nido for his defense and enthusiasm to grow behind the plate. Mesoraco opted to look for a home with another major league ball club, but came up empty handed. The veteran catcher sits on the Mets restricted list after the team declined to release him.

The Mets dropped the ball with the whole thing. It would have just made more sense to get rid of Travis during camp and either save the money off his contract or give it to Mesoraco, who helped the pitching staff greatly last season. Ramos is the main guy here I get that but Devin could have done a way better job serving as the backup here in the big leagues.

Anyway, back to my other argument. The fact that Travis d'Arnaud isn't here any more does make me a little sad, for the man anyway. He deserved a little bit better ending for his time here with the Mets. At the same time, I'm glad he's gone because, lets face facts, he wasn't very good at the plate, or behind it. He was meh at best from where I sit. So now the Mets can move on in a different direction without d'Arnaud here. I do hope that Travis can find another job as a catcher in baseball, I want to see him get another shot at this thing to see if he can turn it around. It was a failed experiment with the Mets.