August trades can be a strange business. With so little time to settle in, the player either clicks fast or becomes a cautionary tale. The Mets learned that lesson in 2007 when they brought in veteran first baseman Jeff Conine, a longtime NL East face, in an attempt to shore up the roster for a playoff push.
The price was light: two minor leaguers who never reached the majors. The return was a 41-year-old Conine, acquired on August 20 from the Cincinnati Reds, who were already out of the race. He had been hitting .265/.320/.409 in a part-time role, mostly at first base, but the age curve caught up with him almost immediately once he arrived in New York.
Conine did open with an RBI single in his first plate appearance, but that was about as good as it got. His offense stalled from there, and the Mets mostly used him as a pinch hitter.
He also saw more time at first base in September after Carlos Delgado got hurt. Delgado later left game 162 early after being hit by a pitch, though that one was already out of hand after the Marlins scored seven times in the first inning and rolled to an 8-1 win.
The Mets didn’t ignore Conine’s age - they were just willing to gamble on it. That team had six players in their age-40 season or older, including 48-year-old Julio Franco, so the front office clearly wasn’t shy about leaning on veterans. But Cincinnati had already shown the warning signs, and there wasn’t much left in the tank.
Conine finished with a career-worst -0.8 bWAR in that brief stretch, including -0.2 bWAR with the Reds before the trade, with defense dragging him down before the bat did the rest. In orange and blue, he hit .195.
It’s worth noting that Conine wasn’t brought in to be the answer to everything, and he certainly wasn’t the reason the Mets fell apart. September 2007 was a weird mix: the offense actually held up well, with several regulars batting over .300 and a few even over .400.
Pitching was the problem. Only Aaron Heilman and Pedro Martinez finished with ERAs below 3.50.
So Conine’s Mets tenure lands in a very specific bucket - not franchise-altering, not catastrophic, just another reminder that the “when do we get to steal a division rival?” file doesn’t always come with a happy ending.
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