On Writing Off 2012 in October of 2011

You can find remarks about the Mets 2012 season being over all over the place.  It’s on Twitter, in the mainstream media, in blogs and blog comments.  Its popularity doesn’t make the statement any less ridiculous.  To suggest that anyone knows exactly how much money the Mets will spend, who they will spend it on, and the likely makeup of the 2012 roster is crazy.  To suggest that anyone how that roster, and the other 29 rosters, will perform is crazier.

The randomness of injuries is one such pitfall to this.   If you can suggest with confidence that the Mets will get hurt, and the opposition won’t, for all of next year you’re kidding yourself.   Every year some injury prone guys stay healthy and have big years, and some perpetually healthy guys get hurt and miss time.   On every team.   Ryan Howard is already out for at least 5-6 months.  David Wright missed months.  Ike Davis missed almost the entire season.  The Mets were a revolving door of injuries and if you’re sure that David Wright is going to get hurt again you’re either delusional or you have a voodoo doll.  Every team deals with injuries, but the Mets managed to have more than most and have them happen to their key guys.  What if it had been Scott Hairston, Jason Pridie and Tim Byrdak that had the most serious injuries last season?

Jose Reyes has stated he’d like to stay with the Mets, and Sandy Alderson has declared it Reyes month.  If you’re sure Reyes isn’t going to be a Met next season, you’re not listening.  It all flows from there.   Sandy Alderson could remake the bullpen and acquire a quality starting pitcher that provides the team with much needed quality innings and allows the offense to build leads.  Jon Niese could develop into an ace.   Lucas Duda could hold down right field and prove to be a force at the plate.  There are a lot of ifs around the league, and despite finances or contracts, the Mets have as much a shot of making themselves better as anyone else.

You’ll often hear “The Mets are so many players away from contending.”  This seems to be a shot in the dark, at best.  No one knows how many players the Mets need, and at what positions.   Health plays in.  The Mets needed to completely collapse in 2007 to miss the playoffs.  It’d have been easy to say that adding Johan Santana, the best pitcher in baseball, was that ‘one player away’ the Mets needed.   Baseball is a team game, and often little moves have a cascading effect.  Adding one solid starting pitching could take 20-30 innings off the bullpens workload.   Most of the time those innings will be the lesser relievers, the guys that generally pitch in the 5th and 6th of games that aren’t critical.   You’re able to shift those innings away from the lower quality relievers, to the higher quality relievers.  Those innings also save total innings pitched for the relievers as a whole, providing them with a little more rest and making them more effective.   Then you can couple that with signing a couple of relievers, no one that’s big-impact, but talented pitchers that help raise the amount of quality innings you’re getting out of the bullpen.

The Mets have a lot of talent.  David Wright, Ike Davis, Daniel Murphy, Jon Niese, Johan Santana and hopefully Jose Reyes.  Hopefully some of the other guys like Lucas Duda, Mike Pelfrey, Angel Pagan, and Jason Bay have pretty talented years as well.   You don’t round out a team with All-Stars, you do it with quality players that provide consistent value.   You sign relievers you trust to get guys out most days.  You sign a veteran backup catcher to help mentor Thole and perhaps platoon with him.  Decent bench guys that can provide value in a key pinch-hitting spot and provide defense when they come into the game late.  The Mets, even with a less ridiculous payroll than the Yankees, will add a bunch of new players next year.  Some of these players will surprise, some will disappoint. If more surprise than disappoint, something we’re hopeful of because of Sandy Alderson, than the Mets will compete.

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