Rick Aguilera - New York Mets

New York Mets

Aguilera attended Edgewood High School in West Covina, CA and played third base. Following graduation, he was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals in the 37th round of the 1980 amateur draft on June 3, but did not sign and instead chose to attend Brigham Young University. After three years at BYU, in which he had made the transition from third base to pitcher, the Mets drafted him in the 3rd round of the 1983 amateur draft on June 6. Although he did not sign until September, he was able to get into 16 games (going 5–6 with a 3.72 ERA in 104 innings) for the Little Falls Mets in the low A-ball New York-Penn League. The following season he was promoted to the Lynchburg Mets in the high-A Carolina League where he was 8–3 with a 2.34 ERA and 101 strikeouts in 88 1/3 innings before being promoted to the Jackson Mets in the AA Texas League. In 1985, Aguilera was promoted to AAA Tides and was 6–4 with a 2.51 ERA in 11 starts before being promoted to the majors.

Aguilera saw his first Major League action on June 12, pitching two innings of scoreless relief and getting the win against the Philadelphia Phillies in a game started by teammate Ron Darling. In the middle of a fierce divisional race with the Cardinals, Aguilera was particularly effective in July, going 3–0 with a 0.89 ERA, and ended the season 10–7 as the Cardinals edged out the Mets. However, Aguilera's fine rookie season was completely overshadowed by 20-year-old rotation-mate Dwight Gooden, who followed up his Rookie of the Year win in 1984 by going 24–4 with a 1.53 ERA to win the Cy Young award and the pitching triple crown.

Aguilera posted an identical record the next year in 1986 as the No 5 starter for the division-winning Mets and second-year playrer was by then obviously part of the team as he was involved in a fight with Houston police outside a disco which resulted in the arrest of not only himself, but also teammates Bob Ojeda, Tim Teufel, and Darling. In the 1986 post-season, Aguilera went on to pitch five scoreless innings in relief against the Houston Astros in the NLCS. Despite a horrid 12.00 ERA in the World Series that year, he was the pitcher of record in the Mets' dramatic Game 6 comeback victory, getting the win despite giving up the two runs which surrendered the lead to Boston in the top of the 10th inning. Injuries slowed him the next two years, as he was limited to 17 starts in 1987 and 3 starts in 1988 by an elbow injury that required surgery. With injury concerns and seven innings of one-run relief in the 1988 NLCS, the Mets decided to experiment with Aguilera as a reliever. After returning to the team in 1989, he was converted to a long reliever and a young David Cone took his rotation spot. Although he was unhappy in a low-leverage bullpen role and asked to be traded, Aguilera in fact thrived as a reliever going 6–6 with a 2.34 ERA, with 80 strikeouts and 7 saves in 36 appearances.

When Dwight Gooden was placed on the disabled list in early July 1989, the Mets begin actively looking for a veteran starting pitcher via trade rather than promote from within into the open rotation slot with young pitchers such as Aguilera, Kevin Tapani, and David West rumored as trade bait. Therefore it was no surprise that after the Mets had just lost their seventh game in a row that Aguilera was included in a last-minute July 31 deadline deal, along with West, Tapani, reliever Tim Drummond and a player to be named (which on October 16 became reliever Jack Savage), for Minnesota Twins ace Frank Viola.