Mike Silva, in a post to New York Baseball Digest, reminds us that Mr. Rocktober, Yorvit Torrealba, was nearly a Met.

It’s true. And Torrealba deserves credit for coming through in the clutch a bunch of times after a brutal year in which his son’s kidnappers made fun of his batting average.

But I suspect there’s a whole ton of randomness at play here. Torrealba did knock the crap out of the ball in 36 high-leverage at-bats in 2009, according to baseball-reference.com, but a) it’s 36 at-bats and b) across his career, Torrealba has been slightly worse in high-leverage situations than in others.

Torrealba had a nice season for a catcher, hitting .291 with a .351 OBP and a .380 SLG, but he posted a .355 batting average in balls in play. Considering his career BABIP is .296, I’m willing to bet there was a little bit of luck involved. Granted, Torrealba’s line-drive rate increased, too, but I, for one, wouldn’t bet on him maintaining either.

In the two years since the Mets backed out of their Torrealba deal and obtained Brian Schneider, Torrealba has posted an 81 OPS+ to Schneider’s 80. Schneider has played a good deal more over that time, though Torrealba obviously had a lot to deal with off the field this season.

Straight up, Torrealba overcame some horrific personal adversity to have a decent season and should be lauded for that. Maybe the run of apparent good luck at the plate was some sort of karmic repayment toward the debt of what happened to his family. But he’s not a better hitter than even Schneider, so it’s hard to get too upset that the Mets missed out on him.

Of course, I’d like it if the Mets could have kept Lastings Milledge, but I fear I’m in the minority there.