Some sports writers and bloggers can’t help but recycle the same stories over and over again, merely inserting different information to reach the same conclusion. A free agent someone deems worthy is passed over, therefore the Mets will not spend money. Someone on the team tweaks a muscle, and the medical staff is inept. The players have a bad game and suddenly they’re unfocused and uncaring. So it should come as no surprise when someone out there twists the Jason Isringhausen signing to meet a common plot point: The Mets are desperate to cut payroll for 2012 and will do anything to get out of K-Rod’s contract. It’s possible that by the time I publish this it’ll already have been written. It’ll probably be something like this:
“Yesterday the Mets signed former closer Jason Isringhausen. Like most of Sandy Alderson’s moves this offseason, Isringhausen came cheap and no one else wanted him. The Mets are hoping to catch a little lightening in a bottle with the former generation K pitcher. With financial ruin looming, the Mets need to cut payroll for 2012 and Francisco Rodriguez’s 17.5 million dollar vesting option is looking expensive. It’s in the Wilpon’s interests to find ways to keep K-Rod from closing 55 games in 2011, and the players association may have a problem if they were to just bench him, or share closer duties with the unproven Bobby Parnell. With the Isringhausen signing, the Mets have another legitimate closer to try to take away some saves from Rodriguez.”
This is most certainly not how the Isringhausen signing went. He had a relationship with J. P. Ricciardi from their Oakland days, and Isringhausen requested a try out to try and make the team. He got a minor league deal with an invitation to major league camp, which is hardly a guarantee of anything more than a couple of innings of work at best.
