Cancel that jersey order! The Mets have traded their first-round Rule 5 Pick Carlos Monasterios to the Los Angeles Dodgers for cash considerations.

It was a brief, but eventful career. Unfortunately, the Monasterios Era is officially over.

Big news this morning: the Mets took pitcher Carlos Monasterios in the Rule 5 draft.

Don’t worry, you’re not supposed to have heard of him. The fun part is they plucked him from the Philadelphia Phillies organization.

Monasterios is a 23-year-old righthander (will be 24 in March) from Venezuela who throws a hard sinker in the low 90s. He was acquired by the Phillies in the deal that sent Bobby Abreu to the Yankees, and has performed with mixed results since that time.

Originally a starter, he moved to the bullpen in 2009 — appearing 29 times as a reliever and making 8 starts. Of those 37 games, 35 came for Clearwater in the Florida State League (A). He pitched a total of 7 innings for AA Reading last year. He had two saves and pitched a shutout for Clearwater.

All told, his ERA last year was 3.73 over 89 IP, with 75 Ks, 29 BB, 4 HR and 79 H, for a 1.21 WHIP. You can see his complete stats here.

Personally I’ve never seen Monasterios pitch so I can’t comment beyond what’s available on the interweb super highway. Seems it would be a pretty big jump to go from A ball to MLB, but it’s been done before.

Andrew Vazzano at TheRopolitans has the rest of the players the Mets took, in the minor league phase of the draft — which is basically used to fill out minor league rosters.

The winter meetings conclude with what’s known as the “Rule 5 Draft”, during which players not on 40-man rosters can be plucked from other organizations. The draft order goes according to the won-loss records of the previous year, beginning with the worst and ending with the best. In a stroke mixed with irony and stupidity, the World Champion Yankees own the #1 pick in the Rule 5 draft — the Nationals traded the pick to the Yanks for Brian Bruney. Six picks later, the Mets get to pick (one of the benefits of their poor 2009 season), and may have the chance at an MLB-ready player. Here are a few possibilities, in no particular order. Continue reading →