Vanilla Roulette

The gun was placed on the temple. The trigger was squeezed.

And the chamber had no bullet.

Boy that was close. At least that's the feeling I get from the second straight season of an inactive trade deadline for the New York Mets, the baseball equivalent of sugar free vanilla ice cream. Of course, the circumstances are a little bit different than they were last season, but the result is still the same. And that isn't a bad thing at all.

Well, at least against the backdrop of what happened to this franchise over the last decade, with star Jason Bay having been wheeled for Steve Reed in a deadline deal that had no effect on the Mets' standing in 2002, and the one from 2004 that doesn't need an introduction, it isn't a bad thing.

Am I willing to give Omar credit for doing the prudent thing and not letting a 5-2 stretch against the Astros and Rockies cloud his vision? Yes and no. Yes because we don't know all the particulars about every deal he was proposed, and for whom the other teams were asking for.

But no ... because we know that the Mets were in on Adam LaRoche.

Would LaRoche have helped? Probably. Would he have helped enough to get the Mets to the wild card spot? Not by himself. Now LaRoche and Victor Martinez would have been interesting, but that's another story altogether. But getting LaRoche by himself wouldn't have been worth the further stunting of Daniel Murphy, forcing Murph to sit down when playing the rest of this lost season at first base would have been the perfect opportunity to develop (not that the Mets have a player development head, but that's yet another story.) And it would have been in direct conflict with what Omar had been saying all along which was "If I make a deal, I have to take into consideration when guys (Carlos Delgado, in this case) were coming back from injury."

Now that paraphrased quote was probably nothing more than a built in excuse for coming up empty, but that's still another story. This franchise full of interesting stories. And for now, they're full of halfway decent minor leaguers, .500 beards (most teams have playoff beards, but y'know ... their goals are realistic) and shortstops who can't run.

Enjoy your bland ice cream. At least it's edible.