Especially for Broxton, whose acquisition was a headscratcher. Perhaps he was one of those Victor Zambrano "we can turn him into something good" gambles, but by the time New York got him, he was already 29 and had proven the major leagues were difficult for him.

He had a 20-20 season with Milwaukee in 2017, but he also hit .220 with 175 strikeouts in just 414 at-bats that year. The latter negatives more than outweigh the former positives ... especially considering he tanked on the Brewers bench in 2018.

I guess he was adept defensively and that was a selling point. Nevertheless, Broxton didn't impress me, they let him linger on the roster too long (34 games despite him hitting .143) and they gave up too much for him. At least they were able to get a little money for him when they finally traded him away.

I never did research on the players the Mets traded for him until today, and Felix Valerio does look like he might eventually be a valuable big leaguer, so just like every other trade that Brodie made (with the exception of the J.D Davis trade), this one was one-sided in the other team's favor.

I also remember looking Broxton up on this site in April 2019 and seeing his popularity ranking was higher than Pete Alonso's and questioning how that was possible. I surmised that Keon Broxton must have lots of friends who bumped up his ranking.

As a player, Broxton turned out to be another in a long line of outfielders who had one good year with another team, then came to the Mets and did absolutely nothing before being designated for assignment. Guys like Gary Matthews Jr, John Mayberry Jr., Aaron Altherr, and most recently, Albert Almora come to mind. I'm not even including guys like Cameron Maybin, Billy Hamilton, Rajai Davis, and Chris Young, because they had decent careers.

Broxton has been out of MLB since 2019, and last year he batted a combined .173 in AAA and rookie ball. I looked up his similarity scores on baseballreference.com and, unsurprisingly, Aaron Altherr has the 4th closest stats of all time to Broxton, but guess who is second closest? Kirk Nieuwenhuis. Crazy that Broxton's career Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is 3.6 and Kirk's is 2.9. All of that output occurred when Broxton played for the Brewers; in 2019 he had a -0.6 WAR for the Mets, Orioles, and Mariners combined.

I choose to be positive, so when I look back on Keon's days as a Met, he represents that era early in Brodie Van Wagenen's tenure when there was hope that he knew what he was doing.