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In a post to MLB Trade Rumors, Tim Dierkes has a long talk with Royals RHP Brian Bannister, who was traded to Kansas City by 
the Mets during last off-season.
Bannister, on his reaction after being traded to the Royals…
“As baseball players, all we want is an opportunity to play. I don’t know what plans the Mets had for me in 2007 before the trade, but I knew that the Royals wanted me to step up and be in the starting rotation right away, and that’s all I could ask for. The Mets will always be very special to me…I have a lot of respect for the Wilpon family and the way they run their organization, the coaches that made sacrifices for me, and the fans that supported me.”
In 27 starts for the Royals last season, Bannister was 12–9 with a 3.87 ERA, though he struggled in September going 1–2 in five starts with a 7.30 ERA.
…for the record, i wrote the following on the day that Brian Bannister was traded for Ambiorix Burgos…
…i am disappointed to see bannister go…however, the Mets have a lot of bannister’s at this point, be it John Maine, Oliver Perez, Philip Humber, or Mike Pelfrey, i.e., young, very promising starting pitchers…what they do not have is a collection of strong, power-arms in the bullpen, and burgos is just that…in other words, the Mets traded from strength to fill a weakness…and i am cool with that…
…also for what it’s worth, you’ll be hard pressed to find a fellow blogger who was overtly passionate about seeing bannister go…frankly, i liked bannister, not only because he is into photography, like me, but because i always admired his poise and pedigree, two things that can never be underrated when staffing a team in new york…that being said, there is no way to know that bannister would have duplicated his impressive stats from the last-place Royals here in new york, for the Mets, in a ridiculously wild, pressure-packed pennant race…personally, i suspect he would have done fine, but who knows…
…in hindsight, this trade is not helped out by the fact that burgos has been nowhere to be found…he underwent Tommy John surgery in late August and has been off the grid ever since…
In late October of last year, Mets GM Omar Minaya told reporters that Burgos will likely miss most of next season, though it’s possible he could pitch towards the end of the year.
Cant blame Omar for this one. First, Banniester projected into nothing more than a 5 starter, and still has to prove himself over the course of a season. Additionally, Burgos is a 1st round talent at age 21- if he’s graduating from college in the US last year, he’s going first 1-2 rounds. Power arms over 5 starters I believe.
You certainly can blame Omar for this one… Bannister was good enough to win the 5th starting job in 06, was ranked our 9th best prospect, got hurt.. and then we took a chance and traded him for guy who had an ERA 5.52 the year before…
Age 21? Burgos is 23, will be 24 by opening Day, and will be 25 before he pitches in the majors again, if at all…
I’ll agree that not many would of picked him to be 3rd in AL ROY voting, by acquiring Jorge Julio the 2nd time.. and this time there was no John Maine to save the day…
It was discussed yesterday on here that if you keep Bannister in the 5th spot for 2007, instead of Pelfrey, Varags, Humber, Williams, and whoever else I’m forgetting.. we probably win those elusive 2 games that cost us so dearly…
1. Burgos was 22 at the time of the deal, I was off by a year.
2. Saying “if we had Bannister we make the playoffs” is the most illogical thought process of all time. If we dont have Chip Ambres, we finish 2 games out then.
3. Watch Bannister’s ERA balloon this year. 88mph fastballs rarely get by over a long stretch in the AL
You don’t think a guy who won 12 games for one of the worst teams in baseball, could of fared better then Jason Vargas (12.19 ERA) Mike Pelfrey (5.57 ERA), Dave Williams (22.85 ERA) and Phil Humber (7.71 ERA) would of resulted in a 2 game difference?
And you think 15 at bats from Chip Ambres is the same thing as 165 innings with an ERA of 3.87and a WHIP of 1.2?
And you’re calling me illogical?
Plenty of guys pitch with 88 MPH fastballs and are plenty effective..
Go Watch Burgos.. oh wait.. we can’t watch him at all…
Both you guys are making solid points. Clearly Bannister won the 5th starter job in 2006 with us and showed he was a capable pitcher. Then he went out and had a terrific campaign last year in the black hole of baseball, KC. You would have to assume he could have handled our black hole…the 5th spot in our rotation in 2007 and his presence there would likely have been enough to get us to the playoffs
Conversely, Burgos is a unique live arm. Unlike any in our system (perhaps Rustich has his power or close). He has future closer written all over him. He also pitched to a mid 3 era when up with our club which is not bad considered he was battling his injury and has been rushed too fast to the majors.
No one could have predicted his injury. It happens. Burgos still has a bright future. Way too early to close the book on him. I can forsee the guy taking over for Wagner.
The jury is still out on this one. I for one saw the trade for what it was…stealing from a perceived area of strength to add to a perceived area of weakness on our club.
Even when Burgos was healthy he stunk.. he was sent to AAA cause he couldn’t cut in the majors.. so we’d still be debating this even if he wasn’t on the shelf, it just makes his return that much more questionable..
For a contending team in 2007 trading away starting pitching depth.. which you and Cerrone keep calling a strength when it was a huge sore spot for us ( see the ERAs of our 5th starters in my 2nd post) for a guy who was never good to begin with, and was more a project then anything.. really cost us…
Maybe it would of been those 2 games.. maybe it wouldn’t of.. but by the time Burgos is pitching again.. Bannister will probably have won 20 something games in the majors.. he’s got an awful lot of catching up to do.. especially with a career ERA of 4.60
Agreed that he has some serious catching up to do. But the guy did not stink. He was sent down to accomodate Mota if you recall. He was the guy with options and served a relatively minor role at the time they sent him down….he was the 6th and 7th inning guy.
We’ll agree that if the snapshot is right now…Bannister has a huge lead on production to date and the trade was a failure. Especially since Burgos is hurt rehabbing and will not be part of this team for 1.5 yrs when he is ready to help again.
Burgos is young, so there is certainly time for this trade to even out. Sometimes it happens that the guy you let go lives up to his potential and the guy you get back gets injured. That said, it’s an obvious demerit against Omar, for now, but one I can live with as long as for the most part they don’t happen too often… and with Petit, Benson, MacLane, Je. Gonzalez, Seo, Gaby Hernandez and Ginter being the only other starters he has dealt, and all underperforming, I can live with that ratio.
So are you not counting Heath Bell, Henry Owens, and Matt Lindstrom who have developed quite nicely?
Just because they’re not starters doesn’t mean that Bannister is the only instance where we’ve come out on the wrong side of a trade involving pitchers..
The thing with Bannister is he was rediculously lucky last season.
“Brian Bannister may not have the same sort of success in his sophomore season. Bannister posted a 3.87 ERA in 165 innings of work despite striking out just 4.2 hitters per nine. His walk rate was not particularly low at 2.4, and he allowed 0.8 homers per nine. His success stemmed from his .266 BABIP, which helped Bannister keep opponents down to .249/.303/.409. If you adjust his BABIP for his liner rate of 19 percent, you get a huge jump to .312; adjusting the opponent line for that puts him at .295/.349/.455, which is the equivalent of turning every hitter into the 2007 version of Miguel Tejada or Jack Wilson. His QERA reflects these issues at 5.18, the fourth-largest bump among starters with at least 125 innings.” — Baseball prospectus
He’s not that good. Now it sucks that Burgos had to go and get hurt, but on paper it was a trade you make every single time.
Burgos was terrible when he was healthy.. his home debut against Ryan Howard.. what was that a 3 run HR to tie the game?
He 17 hits and only 19Ks in 23 innings, with 9 walks tossed in.. he was rarely given a big spot in a game after that Howard HR… and while in AAA to fix his mechanics it was discovered he was damaged goods…
He wasn’t much better in 2005…83 hits in 73 innings to go along with a 5.52 ERA….
I somehow doubt baseball prospectus is going to write a review any more positive on this guy then they did for Bannister
So wait, he had more strikeouts than hits allowed last year… and that’s a bad thing? I think you’re looking at those stats funny.
If Mota had managed to pitch as well as pre-injury Burgos, we’d be basking in the glow of another exciting playoff run, instead of planning to commit ritual mass suicide if we don’t get Santana.
Bottom line, Burgos is young, has good stuff, and strikes guys out. He was rushed to the majors by the Royals, but at the time of the trade, there was no reason to think he couldn’t become a valuable major league reliever. He still can if he recovers from surgery; he’ll be 24 this year.
Yes he struck out 2 more guys then he gave up hits too… everyone raves about his power arm and stuff.. but the Ks just aren’t there.. the only thing that’s there is the hits and the ERA..
If he was pitching so well last year.. why did he spend most of the time in AAA before he went under the knife?
There are plenty of reasons to think he can’t become a valuable reliever.. like a career 4.60 ERA.. and now who knows what he’ll do when he comes back from injury.. plenty of guys don’t make it back.
Burgos had a 3.42 ERA and a 1.10 WHIP in the Majors Leagues last season, averaging 7.23 K/9. That is a very respectable stat-line no matter who you are. Then he got sent down to AAA in a numbers game (I think it was when Mota was first coming off the suspension) and got hurt in AAA.
I think the fans gave him too much of a raw deal when he was here. People act like he was crap, no he was a pitcher that showed tons of promise when he was healthy. He just needed time to polish his game.
Absolutely. plus he was obviously affected by the injury that ultimately arose. Elbow issues requiring tommy john surgery usually present their symptons along the way in the elbow before the snap. Things like being unable to loosen up and having a dull ache in the elbow etc. That might have further depressed what were pretty decent numbers when up with us
He proved early on he wasn’t ready to pitch in big spots.. of course there was no room on the roster for him.. his stats only slightly improved because he came into blow outs or mop up duty..
Between 4/25 and 5/4 he pitched in 4 games, for a total of 8 innings, and gave up4 runs..
He had one good outing against the cubs in the infamous Jason Vargas game where Willie started his “A -” guys
Then pitched in 3 drubbings where the Mets lost 6-2, 8-1. and 7-2, and was then sent to AAA never to been from again…
You can cherry pick the stats to make them seem however you want them to. See Phillip Hughes last year. On the whole..just ok. But a winning record and mid 4 era plus the near no hit game through 6 innings.
But he pitched against Tampa 3 times and Seattle and Baltimore 2 times. Weak competition for sure assisted in making the stats look presentable. He may be become a stud but he did not impress me with that competition
I wasn’t too pleased at the time and I’m sure voiced those concerns. I am also concerned that when I went back to find my comments at the time, that all comments, at least from that period of the archives are now gone. Are they gone forever or can they be restored. I know that takes up a lot of space, but since you want to know what your readers want, I’ll state that having the ability to go back historically and look at what comments from Mets fans were made at any given time is quite important. Of course, it is nice to have an archive of what was written “officially” on Metsblog, but it feels like the readers are being shown a lack of importance by not keeping their comments. Of course, I understand that it must actually be about dollars and cents for all of the storage space and Metsblog has always treated its readers very respectfully. I’m just saying that if there is a way to restore the comments from previous days, months and years and the money (maybe with SNY’s help), it would be valuable. This is a good example. We are being challenged to find “bloggers” who were broken up about losing Bannister. Well, maybe bloggers didn’t care, but some of the average fans did and now we can’t go back and look it up.
I wasn’t pleased. I liked Bannister’s amazing composure and skill which we really don’t have at the moment in a young pitcher. Oliver Perez is a tremendous talent, but his composure needs work. Maine’s second half performance wasn’t that great, although all things considered he had a great year, but Bannister was the most consistant. His hitting skills will be wasted in the AL.
And also, there are plenty of power relievers out there. About 8 out of 10 aren’t effective. Not to mention that we have about 1 billion in the minors.
It was a bad trade. It was then, it is now. It wasn’t too major, but it was a bad trade.
The comments above do a good job of pro/con on the trade so I’ll just say that I believe Brian Bannister to be a class act who is a positive additon to any clubhouse and unless he’s pitching against the Mets I’ll be rooting for him.
The problem with Burgos is that he was wild and has a low pitching IQ. In the early part of spring training he would rear back and throw as hard as he could. No wonder he came up with a bum arm.
Bannister was projected to be by some a middle of the rotation starter. Trading him was a terribly short-sighted move by Omar that definitely did hurt them last year and could hurt them this year, especially if Omar goes out and gets LIvan. Ugh. The thought of that is nauseating. Bannister will have a better 2008 season than Livan and throw more quality innings. And be a helluva lot cheaper.
I don’t think Bannister can reproduce those numbers this year.
Pitchers with higher VORP than any Met pitcher in 2007:
Scott Kazmir
Heath Bell
Brian Bannister
Jesusian H Chirst people…get over it. Injuries happen, and they cannot be predicted. Let’s also not forget the Mets are not the only teams out there that make a trade that seems fair, and it blows up…or a piece gets hurt. You people are acting like this is the first time this has happened. The Mets and like most teams are littered in their history of failed and lopsided trades. For every bum trade I can name a good one…and vice-versa.
Hindsight is 20/20.
I liked Bannister, I did. But trading him away at the time wasn’t some earth shattering move made by Omar. And I don’t care what his stats are…he acquired them with the Royals in what amounted to a laughable Division that at the time was merely a small step up from the NL Central. Don’t start making the distinction as if Bannister is the next coming…he’s not…and neither is Burgos. Let’s be honest people. This was a trade of 2 mediocre pitchers being swapped for each other…PERIOD. You can tell me stats until your blue in the face. Bannister ONLY made the 2006 team because none of the usual suspects that year were any better in ST. THAT’S IT! He was 2-1 that year in 6 starts because of an injury. That was the year the Mets took their time bringing him back. And when he was traded…not a tear was shed.
Oh and by the way…if you truly want to see stats. The only stats worth looking at is September 2007. He faced MIN, NYY, CLE, CHW, CHW in that order. That’s 2 Playoff hopefuls, a mediocre team, and a bad team. Very comparable teams to whom the Mets faced in September ‘07. He gave up 20 runs over the course of the month, and went 1-2 in 5 games. This is for the Royals keep in mind (out of playoffs, no pressure).
To keep this in perspective, Tom Glavine faced ATL, HOU, PHI, FLA, WAS, FLA. That’s 2 Playoff hopefuls, and 3 “eh” to bad teams. He gave up 21 runs over the month and went 2-2 in 6 games. Keep in mind the Mets were in the Playoff hunt right down to the final game and was in the middle of HUGE pressure while disintegrating before our eyes.
Glavine’s last win before the end of the Season was September 8th. Bannister’s last win before the end of the season was September 2nd. In other words to those who feel Bannister would have made the 2 game difference. Your out of your minds…and second guessing after the fact.
In 3 of his final 4 games Bannister gave up 7, 6, 5 ER’s.
In 3 of his final 4 games Glavine gave up 4, 6, 7 ER’s.
Sounds to me we’d be cursing Bannister’s name and throwing it on the fires that torched the end of last season just like we did Glavine’s.