The other day the Orioles trotted out a player named Montanez and it made me nostalgic for good ol’ Willie Montanez.
Willie was another of the non-stars of The Torre Years (Flushing version).
At age 29 Willie was an all-star for Atlanta, so the Mets traded away John Milner and Jon Matlack in a multi-team deal to get him.
Now Mets fans, what happens when the Mets bring in someone else’s All-Star?
That’s right, they would come to Shea and suck.
Montanez handed in .256 with 17 homers and 96 RBI in 1978 – not bad, add some steroids and 17 is 30 modern day homers….but in 79 the suckiness crept in and he hit .234 before being shipped off to Texas for Ed Lynch and Mike Jorgensen.
I’m a little young to know why the Mets gave up on Matlack who won 15, 14, 13, 16, 17 and 7 games before being sent off as a 28 year old lefthander. He seems to me like the kind of guy you’d want around. Maybe some old-timer out there can hit comments and educate me. (And don’t tell me that uniform doesn’t look 100 times better than what they wear now
Willie Montanez, wherever you are, I lift my Rheingold to you.
www.metspolice.com
Matlack was just as disgusted as Seaver with the Mets front office by ’77, vocal about their lack of action with regard to free agency. Also, he was one of those guys who didn’t get enough credit because his W-L numbers never looked good. But he was nasty, brutal on lefty hitters especially. That was really a terrible trade from the Mets perspective.
However I’m gonna hafta issue you a citation for spelling his name wrong. Like me, Jon is a Jonathan who went by Jon with no H.
Wow guilty as charged. No excuse there. I have fixed it.
Thanks for the insight!
You never know exactly why a guy is REALLY traded.
But Matlack had an off year in 1977
-and the Mets may have made the wrong guess that he was on the downside of his career.
Furthermore, 1977 was a year of general house cleaning, and the Mets may have just wanted to shake up the mix.
Finally, as mentioned above, Willie Montanez was an All-Star, and the Mets were forever looking for a power hitter, and a veteran to boot, as the Mets in 1978 were a avery young and inexperienced team.
In hindsight, the Mets would have been better off keeping Jon Matlack, as he had several good years in Texas, and the late 1970s/early 1980s Mets were in desperate need of pitching.
See Dick Young for Seaver's trade to the Reds. Reporter in Ny who did not like Seaver and wrote articles that did not sit well with Seaver.