Today officially marked the end of the Chris Carter chapter of Mets history (barring some later return in his career, but I guess that would start another chapter) and its a chapter that really explains a lot about the Mets front office and the Mets fan base while showing the human element of baseball.
The way we acquired Carter says a lot about the front office regime at that time. The Mets traded Billy Wagner to the Red Sox for a player to be named later, who happened to be Carter. At the time, Wagner just came back from recovering and was actually pitching well, but the Mets were essentially out of contention at that point. The Mets could have offered him arbitration at the end of the year, something most people outside of the team whether in hindsight or not, actively agreed with, but the team didn't go that route. Instead Wagner ended up being a type A free agent (I believe, or at least a type B, I'll check on this later) and signed with the Braves sending 2 (or 1 depending on the earlier statement) to Boston.
The Mets instead got Carter. On that evidence alone, Carter was a waste. We got a little over 100 AB's vs first round draft picks.
However there is an odd, human side of baseball that is so woven into the Chris Carter story. I was having a conversation with a history teacher that taught me in High School, that I respect very much (and I will probably exploit this anecdote to a full blown article later) about statistics vs liking players and were talking about we as humans, we have this non-rational pull to players just because we like them, and we will ignore all other statics to do this (like WARP). This is fine for us as fans to have this, but devastating when a front office has this, which one could claim was a problem in the latter half of the Minaya era and why I am personally thankful for Alderson.
As fans, there was no strong statistical reason to like Carter over a slew of other worthy WARP players other than his amazing Spring Training. Lets face it, we fell, or at least I will admit I did, in love with the idea of Carter (for me it was Dan Murphy all over again). Here was a guy who worked really hard, and was constantly being over looked (Mike Jacobs over Carter? Come On!), his homers seemed more frequent than they actually were because of this enchanting American story around him. He had an endearing nickname, “The Animal”, which game us more of illogical reason to like him. He was this entity for us as fans to cling to for hope, although in the “goal” of a baseball season, he meant nothing.
This is why its hard to say good bye to him. It is the right thing for the organization to part ways (no sacred cows) but for the stories and the memories, we want to keep him.
