“Some trades, and their consequences, don’t just grow. They metastasize. Thirteen months after the Mets drafted a L.A. high school outfielder named Pete Crow-Armstrong in the first round, they succumbed to a particularly bad strain of pennant fever. They lusted for Javier Baez, the many-faceted star of the Cubs in the late 2010s.
Except this was 2021. The Mets were leading the National League East by four games at the time, but interim general manager Zack Scott, supported by club president Sandy Alderson, wanted more.
So Scott called the Cubs, who had Tom Myers, a scout who had done a lot of pre-draft work on Crow-Armstrong. Myers told the Cubs who to ask for, and Baez went east and Crow-Armstrong went to the midwest. If you’ve noticed, his journey has taken a sharp turn northward.”
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