Carlos Delgado

Slugging free agent first baseman Carlos Delgado eschewed a deserate plea to sign with the Mets in 2005 and signed instead with Florida, only to see the Marlins trade him to New York to play out that contract a year later. Delgado over four seasons produced two excellent years (2006 and 2008), a comparitively lackluster one (2007) and he succumbed to a season- and perghaps career-ending injury in 2009. The Mets in those years tended to perform like their slugger did: dangerous in '06 and '08, oddly lacking in '07, hurting and ineffectual in 2009. Whether this was the kind of "leadership" they'd bargained for with Delgado, and whether they could do without it, time will tell.