Mets and Marlins trade minor league arms

The Mets traded Henry Owens and Matt Lindstrom, both RHPs, to Florida for Jason Vargas and Adam Bostick, both LHPs.  Here’s a link; apparently the announcement is coming at 6pm EST. Vargas is the most MLB-ready of the bunch: he had a nifty half-season in 2005, but wasn’t able to repeat in ’06.  He’ll provide rotation insurance for New York of the Oliver Perez variety.

Owens is probably the guy with the biggest potential impact: in 40 Double-A innings, he struck out seventy-four.  He’s got some control problems, too, but adjusting for park and translating his stats to MLB numbers, that gives him an OPS against of .456.  OPS!  He could be a good one.  Lindstrom and Bostick are in there to even out the deal; Lindstrom is mostly roster filler at this point–he had a good year between A+ and AA, but he’s 26.  Bostick is 23, but still has only pitched a few innings above Double-A.

Also just in: the Moises Alou deal is one year, $7.5 million with a club option for 2008.

By Jeff Sackmann