Piazza’s on the Road Again

The road to Cooperstown took another sharp turn Friday when Mike Piazza was traded for the second time in a week.

The first was a stunner.

The second--which sent Piazza to the New York Mets for three prospects--should not have been a surprise to anyone.

The Florida Marlins are operating a commodities exchange.

They have dumped 15 of the 25 players who were on their World Series roster last year.

Their payroll has gone from $53 million in October to $33 million in April to $24 million after trading Gary Sheffield, Bobby Bonilla, Charles Johnson and Jim Eisenreich to the Dodgers for Piazza and Todd Zeile last Friday, and now to their target figure of $16 million. Only the Pittsburgh Pirates ($13 million) and Montreal Expos ($9 million) have a lower payroll.

By reducing his obligations, team President Don Smiley, trying to buy the club from H. (for Hated in South Florida) Wayne Huizenga, may now have put the Marlins in position to net a small profit this year, attract potential investors in his purchase group and secure the bank loan that will enable him to complete financing on the $169-million deal.

Piazza was simply another piece in the Marlins’ payroll puzzle, another slab in the butcher shop.

As reported at the time of the deal with the Dodgers, the Marlins never intended to keep Piazza and figured to move quickly.

Just the other night, Amaury Telemaco of the Arizona Diamondbacks threw two pitches in the direction of Piazza’s head.

Smiley and his accountants required resuscitation.

The Marlins couldn’t risk injury to a valuable commodity by waiting until midsummer to trade him. They couldn’t risk seeing the market evaporate before the July 31 trade deadline and get stuck receiving only draft choices as compensation when Piazza left as a free agent at the end of the season.

They had to deal when interest was highest.

The Mets? That should be no surprise as well.

They have been listed among the strongest suitors from Day 1, a team devoid of a star in a city that demands stars, a distant afterthought to the sizzling Yankees, who own the headlines and all the hearts on Broadway.

At least they did.

The Piazza acquisition figured to dominate the tabloids on a Memorial Day weekend that finds the Yankees playing the Boston Red Sox in an early showdown in the American League East.

Met co-owner Fred Wilpon, who along with partner Nelson Doubleday may have overridden General Manager Steve Phillips’ hesitation about the deal, acknowledged that the box office played into it as much as the batter’s box.

He said Piazza’s acquisition was bigger than the trades that brought either Keith Hernandez or Gary Carter to the Mets. Neither had the magnitude of Piazza, Wilpon said, adding:

“This town is ready and waiting for Mike. They love him already, and they’ll love him even more in a Mets uniform.

“Mike Piazza is the kind of player, like Willie Mays, like Mickey Mantle, the kind of player that will take to this town. He’s a New York kind of guy.”

Piazza seemed to be an L.A. type of guy, a Dodger lifer, until he asked for $105 million.

Whether the Mets are simply renting him over the rest of a season in which they have been wracked by injuries and seen their playoff hopes fade in the wake of a promising 1997 campaign isn’t clear, but the impression is they will make a serious effort to sign him to a long-term contract.

Agent Dan Lozano is scheduled to meet with Phillips in Florida on Tuesday.

Asked Friday if he was scared by that $105-million figure, Wilpon said:

“He wouldn’t be here if we were.”

The Mets have three catchers on the disabled list, including Todd Hundley, who hit 71 homers during the last two seasons and is expected to return at some point after the All-Star break from September surgery for elbow reconstruction, meaning either Piazza or Hundley would have to move to first base. John Olerud, the current first baseman, is the Mets’ leading hitter at .345, but Olerud has also played the outfield.

Piazza exhibited no interest in first base while a Dodger, but agent Lozano said Friday: “If he’s happy here and they want him here, could he move to first base? Absolutely, he could.”

How it will play out isn’t certain, but this much is:

The Marlins got what they wanted out of Piazza.

They paid him about $400,000 in the week he was with them, but they reduced their payroll $17 million via his revolving-door acquisition and departure, they are no longer responsible for the remainder of his $8-million salary, they acquired three more top prospects and they may lower the payroll even more by trading Zeile, who for the time being remains sentenced to the dying Fish.

It is despicable, of course, what the Marlins have done to a championship team, but no more so, perhaps, than buying the championship to start with.

The popular theme is to lament the absence of a commissioner who would have voided these decimating series of deals, but this hasn’t been Charlie Finley selling Joe Rudi, Vida Blue and Rollie Fingers strictly for cash.

How do you stop player-for-player trades?

How do you give a commissioner the authority to determine if a trade was good or bad, was in the best interest of baseball or wasn’t?

What the Marlins have done hasn’t been, but so be it.

The turnaround deals involving Piazza were the most blatant yet, but he was gone from the time he arrived.

Anyone who was surprised hasn’t been paying attention.

* VIEWPOINT LETTERS: Fans don’t understand and most don’t agree with Dodger deal. C7