People often ask me why I freak out so much about moves like the Gary Matthews deal or the now long-forgotten promotion of Abraham Nunez. Check out David Roth at Can’t Stop the Bleeding:
But the Matthews trade — Omar getting “his guy” in a deal that everyone else in the entire freaking world thinks is incomprehensible and ridiculous — is a reminder of how bizarrely bleak it is to be a Mets fan right now. The moves arrive out of nowhere, reflect no philosophy beyond an anarchically da-da absence of internal logic, and allow almost no commentary but this. That is, maundering, meandering wonderment. That is, bafflement, more than any sort of disagreement or — because it’s not 2005, and I’m not 26 anymore — aggrieved grief.
Roth is, by his own admission, overreacting. I did too. Sometimes that happens when you’re slapped in the face with absurdity, I think. And with the Mets’ front office, it often feels like an onslaught.
Tedquarters 
The deal for Gary Matthews doesn’t reflect a lack of “logic” or “philosophy.” The Mets, faced with an injury to Beltran and a need for another CF option in case Pagan gets injured, traded for one. They sent a relief pitcher who is expendable because of other recent signings, and who isn’t a world-beater anyway.
The problem is not the “logic” or the “philosophy,” but that their assessment of Matthews’s value is wrong. The reason the deal is bad is because no one except the Mets thinks that Matthews can play anymore. The idea of dealing from strength, however, to shore up a position of weakness isn’t daft.
That’s a good point. There’s logic there, it’s just flawed because it’s rooted in the idea that Matthews is still worth something in center field.
Wow, thanks for the link, Ted; I’m a fan and a reader, and it’s cool to get a plug.
Anyway, I agree with the commenter’s issue with my word choice, to a point — there were like 1200 words in that post, so some of them were bound to be off. But operative phrase here is “internal logic,” not “logic” itself — the Mets didn’t trade for a rhinoceros or a sedan (that’s no logic at all), but they did acquire GMJ as part of Omar’s “speed and defense” plan, which all available stats tell us is a pretty seriously off-base move. I know it’s a long read, but most of what I wrote is about that severe, baffling mis-evaluation of GMJ, and how it fits into the bigger frustrations of being a mets fan circa now.