David Robertson trade means Mets wave white flag

The Mets celebrated a hard-fought 2-1 victory over the Washington Nationals on Thursday night at Citi Field after enduring a 97-minute rain delay. Mark Canha’s sacrifice fly had the distance to score Pete Alonso, breaking the 1-1 tie in the eighth inning.

Sadly, this will be a sidebar to the big news that the Mets made after the game. They traded David Robertson to the Miami Marlins for infielder Marco Vargas and catcher Ronald Hernandez, prospects that excelled in the Florida Complex League this year.

Who cares about what the Mets got in return? The takeaway should be that they gave up on their season. Mets general manager Billy Eppler and Mets owner Steve Cohen basically told Mets manager Buck Showalter, the players and the fans that the team is not good enough to make the playoffs as a wild card by trading their closer within the division. Basically, players don’t have the incentive to play hard anymore and fans don’t have any reason to show up at Citi Field and watch the team the rest of the season.

All that’s left is counting the days until Eppler and Showalter are gone. There’s no doubt Cohen will make changes as he lets his new president of baseball operations hire people that he sees fit to operate his vision of this franchise.

It says here the Mets should have stand pat and try to make a run out of this for a month or two. It’s hard to think they were getting much out of the veterans in a trade. There really was no point in trading Robertson if they couldn’t get guys who can contribute to the team now.

Who knows about Vargas and Hernandez? They are prospects. Maybe they pan out. Maybe they don’t. But let’s say the Mets hire David Stearns or James Click as the president of baseball operations this offseason, does anyone think either or both players that came in return for Robertson will even be in the team’s plans? That’s why this trade seemed strange.

It was pointless to trade any player on the Mets roster with Eppler likely being a lame duck as a general manager. The time to make trades would have been in the offseason when the Mets name their new president of baseball operations, not now.

The Amazins' may have had a tough go of leapfrogging many teams in the wild-card race. After all, they haven’t sustained winning streaks all season. They have lost a lot more series than won series this year. They failed to sweep an awful Chicago White Sox team last week, and they failed to sweep a doubleheader against the Boston Red Sox that could have had them gain traction in the wild-card race. They couldn’t finish off the struggling Yankees on Wednesday night for an opportunity to get a sweep.

It’s hard to believe they are good enough to make the playoffs even if they stood pat. Still, they were better off trying and making the most of this season. It beats the alternative of playing out the season. At least, the team can attempt to get fans interested before school is back in session and football season starts in earnest.

Trading players such as Mark Canha, Tommy Pham, Brooks Raley and Adam Ottavino would have been easy to accept, but trading Robertson is tough to take since he has been such a pro in stepping up as a closer. He’s always reliable when he is out there on the mound. He has been one of the few bright spots in what has been a disappointing season.

If Mets closer Edwin Diaz did not injure his knee during his country’s team celebration in the World Baseball Classic, it would have been fun to watch Robertson as the setup man and the Mets original closer finishing the game up. It would have made Showalter’s job easy when it came to mixing and matching his relievers that would build a bridge for those two.

It turned out the Mets never really recovered from Diaz’s injury. This team did not seem ready to play this season, even when they were off to a 14-7 start. They could never snap out of their malaise as the season went on.

This basically set the stage for this news that the Mets made.

After starting the season with high expectations with a $370 million payroll and ending up now playing out the season, it’s disappointing. There’s no other way to say it.

Cohen talked about playing to win when he owned the Mets. This time around, he said no mas by giving up on the season. He had a nice honeymoon here, but now that’s all but over after the way the season has gone awry and making the decision to start selling rather than hope for the best. If he can’t get Stearns or Click to oversee the team’s mess this offseason, then he will really get criticism from the fans and the local media.

Here’s the bright side to the Mets giving up on the season now rather than later: August should serve as an opportunity for free time such as watching the New York Liberty before there are seven NFL Sundays left for a new NFL season.

We can thank Eppler and Cohen for making that happen.

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