Pete Crow-Armstrong is a lottery ticket that's paying for Cubs

For those wondering, yes, Zack Scott is fully aware of how perfect it would be for the Mets to have Pete Crow-Armstrong patrolling centerfield this season.

No offense to Tyrone Taylor, a defensive wizard himself, but Crow-Armstrong, or simply PCA for short, currently is an MVP candidate for the Cubs. And we’re talking about the entire National League, not just for the North Siders.

Scott, of course, was the Mets general manager who pulled the trigger on the 2021 three-player trade that sent PCA — back then a promising glove-first Class A outfielder with an injured shoulder — to the Cubs for two-time All-Star Javy Baez (a pending free agent) and righthander Trevor Williams.

The Mets selected Crow-Armstrong with the No. 19 overall pick in the previous year’s draft, so the people in the building obviously were believers. As for Scott, he still was relatively new with the Mets, first coming to Flushing from the Red Sox as an assistant GM the previous December and then taking over as acting GM when Jared Porter was fired in late January.

Nonetheless, Scott was wary of trading an 18-year-old high school player with that much upside for a rental player and a bullpen swingman. Four years ago, few imagined it would be quite this much upside, as Crow-Armstrong’s 2.2 WAR (according to FanGraphs) is the fifth-highest in the majors, tied with Pete Alonso as of Saturday. His nine homers and 27 RBIs led all NL centerfielders and his .842 OPS and 12 stolen bases ranked second (trailing the Pirates’ Oneil Cruz in both categories).

The Mets already knew PCA was a dazzling defender with speed. Projecting the bat was a trickier proposition, and Scott — who feared an overpay from the jump — has marveled at his rapid ascent in Chicago nearly from the moment he got into that farm system.

“In my estimate, he tripled his value with the Cubs in that first year or two,” Scott said in a phone interview. “He took a huge leap. And it’s easy to say, well, that’s what young players do. No it’s not. To not even be in the top 100, and seen that way by the industry, from the outside, and then you jump to the top 10. That usually doesn’t happen. That’s not a normal progression.

“Maybe you go from there to 75 and then maybe you can progress. Maybe that’s where you kind of set your level. But to his credit, to the credit of the Cubs’ player development, he got there really fast and started hitting for much more power. So I’m happy for him. He was someone that we liked as a guy and had a lot of good things going for him. Definitely the right mindset to be a big-leaguer.”

But there are two sides to every trade, and Scott — like the vast majority of his Mets predecessors — had to concentrate more on the talent he was bringing in. What people tend to forget is that the 2021 Mets spent 114 days atop the NL East and were leading the division by 3 1⁄2 games when they traded for Baez, who was desperately needed as a fill-in for Francisco Lindor (the All-Star shortstop would be sidelined until mid-August with a strained oblique).

The NL East was a free-for-all at that point, and the Mets hadn’t been to the playoffs since 2016, when they lost a do-or-die wild-card game to the Giants at Citi Field. It also was Steve Cohen’s first season as owner. He had made a November pledge to win the World Series in three to five years and had just spent $341 million to lock up Lindor for the next decade on the eve of Opening Day.

In other words, the 2021 trade deadline in Flushing — like so many others before it — was no time for cool-headed, rational analysis of the franchise’s long-term future. The Mets’ immediate situation called for action, and Scott was the person tasked with improving that ’21 team as best he could.

Interestingly enough, the Cubs first insisted on hard-throwing prospect Matt Allan, whom the Mets considered untouchable during the deadline (Allan, now 24, has made only 11 pro starts — none above Class A — since numerous operations, including Tommy John surgery).

The Mets also guarded the top two prospects in their system, Francisco Alvarez and Ronny Mauricio, along with the name right below Allan — Brett Baty. Next up was Crow-Armstrong, though he still was uncomfortably high on the Mets’ prospect list. Because the Cubs were in the midst of a roster-wide fire sale, there was a breakneck speed to the trade talks, and Scott mentioned the potential for even more deals — a James McCann (plus cash) for Willson Contreras swap along with a trade for closer Craig Kimbrel — that never materialized.

It was the Cubs who kept offering names in their persistence to get Allan, and when they finally backed off, Crow-Armstrong entered the picture. Scott was not a fan of trading for a rental such as Baez, but amid growing frustration over other clubs’ lack of interest in their lower prospects — and the very Mets-ian pressure to make a deadline splash — the deal got done.

“I’ve been involved in 20 trade deadlines and they’re all exhausting,” said Scott, who worked in the Red Sox’s front office for nearly two decades. “You’re just hoping you made your team better. This was one where I was like, this isn’t one objectively that we should do, but there was more involved than that.”

And yet Baez had one of the better half-seasons of his career with the Mets, hitting .299 with nine homers, 22 RBIs and an .886 OPS in those 47 games (though somewhat stained by the notorious “thumbs-down” gesture to the Citi Field fans). The versatile Williams proved to be a superb swingman with a 3.17 ERA in 40 appearances (12 starts) that stretched through the 2022 season.

The bottom line, however, is that those additions didn’t help accomplish the primary goal. The Mets went 21-37 over the final two months as the hope of Jacob deGrom riding to the rescue fizzled out (they finished third, 11 1⁄2 games behind Atlanta, and Scott was replaced by Billy Eppler that winter). DeGrom repeatedly tried to ramp up for the stretch run but kept being shut down, and Scott said the Mets didn’t get the definitive word on the severity of his elbow inflammation until shortly after the trade deadline.

If the Mets got the diagnosis ahead of time that deGrom would be on the shelf for the entire second half, thereby seriously wounding the team’s playoff chances, Scott insists that the PCA-for-Baez swap never would have happened.

“If I had known that, I would have just said, let’s hold our cards, let’s hold our pieces,” Scott said. “He was the key.”

What might have been. Rather than Crow-Armstrong visiting Citi Field this weekend with the Cubs, he could be playing centerfield for the home team, maybe hitting as high as fifth behind Alonso. It’s hard not to envision PCA, still only 23, as a foundational piece in Flushing for more than a decade. If prospects are lottery tickets, a six-year controllable asset to dream on, Crow-Armstrong is one who is paying off.

“That was probably the most negative-value trade that I had supported in my career,” Scott said. “Even if Pete Crow-Armstrong flames out — which I don’t believe he will — it still was a bad trade because his value went up so high, you could have traded him for something long term. We got really good players, but just for a short period.”

By David Lennon

dave.lennon@newsday.comDPLennon

David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.