he hit .329 with 10 home runs<\/a> in 286 trips to the plate while stealing 19 bases.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
After the season, alongside Bob Johnson who\u2019d have a couple of good years as a starter\/reliever in the majors, the Mets traded Otis to the Kansas City Royals. Third baseman Joe Foy came over. It was a precursor to the far more infamous trade for Jim Fregosi. Foy spent only one year with the Mets, playing in 99 games. He hit 6 home runs and had a .702 OPS. Oddly another player who was a Rule 5 Draft selection as a minor leaguer, later a pick in the expansion draft, and finally once more a Rule 5 pick after the 1970 season with the Mets (the Rule 5 Draft was much different back then), one season of not very much was all the Mets gained from this trade.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Otis immediately had an impact for the Royals. He was an All-Star in 1970. His 36 doubles led the league. He\u2019d steal a league-high 52 bases the following season. Once again an All-Star, he added his first of three Gold Gloves.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
14 seasons with the Royals, Otis stacked up 1977 hits, three Gold Gloves, five All-Star appearances, and four top 10 MVP finishes. The biggest threat to the New York Yankees in the latter part of the 1970s, he finally got to the World Series in 1980. Defeated by the Philadelphia Phillies, Otis still managed to clobber 3 home runs and bat .478.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
New York practically shoplifted Otis away from Boston. Almost as quickly, they gave him up for nothing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source risingapple.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was late November, 1966 when MLB held its first version of what has now become the Rule 5 Draft. The New York Mets were incredibly active, selecting three players on the major league scale. Tommie Reynolds, Bart Shirley, and John Sullivan were all taken by the club. The draft had several rounds of minor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2181362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2181361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/How-the-NY-Mets-stole-a-Red-Sox-player-then.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2181361"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2181363,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181361\/revisions\/2181363"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2181362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2181361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2181361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2181361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}