Acquired in the offseason prior to the 1999 campaign in a trade with the Crik Rats that also brought Kevin Millwood and Kerry Lightenberg to the Zingrods in exchange for Shane Reynolds.

Taylor isn't the most dominant closer in the league, but his salary is reasonable and he gets the job done. The Zingrods learned the hard way in 1998 that paying double the salary for 10 extra saves is a bad idea.

Taylor was released today in the wake of his trade to the Mets. The thing that really, really sucks about this is that the Zingrods' owner is a real-life Mets fan, so it seems inappropriate to complain. However, the Zingrods just went from having the closer on a contender to having a second-rate setup man on a contender. Worse yet is that the A's seem content to let Doug Jones blow saves instead of making TJ Mathews the stopper.

On the bright side, the Mets now have one closer to do the actual closing (Franco) and two more closers (Benitez and Taylor) to set up.