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Mets Are Winning In Spite Of Their Acquisitions

photo by CeetarThe Mets acquired Kelly Johnson, Juan Uribe, and Yoenis Cespedes to help a struggling offense, and shortly after they started winning more games and scoring more runs. However, this was largely in part to players the Mets already had as the new guys haven’t really been pulling their weight.

 

Including Michael Conforto, the new guys have hit .198/.260/.333 going into yesterday’s game. That’s a 64 wRC+, significantly below average. During that time Lucas Duda has hit nine home runs and has a wRC+ of 234. He’s the main reason the Mets are where they are. Other players have contributed too, Curtis Granderson and Daniel Murphy particularly. The Mets were always due to hit better than they were leading into the trades, dealing with some hard luck and some injuries. That they’re doing so now is not surprising.

 

This isn’t to rag on the new guys. The new guys are very good baseball players who won’t stay down long. THAT is the biggest thing about the trades in that it gives the Mets flexibility and eliminates holes in the lineup and allows everyone to find a way to contribute. It’s not that the Mets got some solid players, it’s that they stopped giving plate appearances to guys that weren’t hitting. John Mayberry Jr and Eric Campbell are gone, and Collins is picking his spots for Juan Lagares and Wilmer Flores, the two guys who were making the most outs on the team. If someone starts to hit more, they’ll get to play more.

 

Things look to get better offensively–maybe much better. Cespedes, Uribe, and Johnson will definitely hit more. Michael Cuddyer so far looks much better, and if he can stay away from that knee pain, there’s little doubt that he’ll continue to contribute.

 

The biggest thing of all, the one that makes me most giddy, is the potential return of David Wright. Nobody added a better hitter than Wright at the trading deadline. Adding in a legitimate top hitter in baseball to a lineup like the Mets is going to make it scary. Even if Wright has to take a chunk of days off to ease back into not playing baseball for months. Even if he’s not vintage Wright. He knows how to play baseball. I can’t help but bet on David. I can’t help but look forward to him returning.

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Mets Fill In The Blank

If the Mets announce ______ I would praise them and think it’s a good step towards a successful year.

 

Currently it seems like no matter what the Mets do, whether it’s express interest, express dismay at prices, suggest that a guy’s not a good fit, or ponder giving a current Met off a bad season another shot they get resounded mocked and killed for it.

 

Sure, they’ve earned it. The results speak for themselves and whether or not you trust the plan, they’ve reached the point where they really need to put the money where their mouth is. That said, they do HAVE a plan, and it’s one they’re not articulating, no matter what rumors and leaks you hear. Talking about the plan hurts the effectiveness of the plan.

 

Of course, no matter how much money the Mets say they have to spend, they have all offseason to build the roster. Whether or not they spend $20, $5, or even $40 million on the payroll is irrelevant to the actual makeup of the team on 3/31/14. If that team looks like a team that can win more than 81 games, then perhaps they’ll earn some good will. It’s silly to criticize the entire painting when the artist has only drawn two lines on a piece of canvas. You may be extremely skeptical that it’s going to turn into anything resembling art, but until it does, it has the potential. Until Sandy Alderson has crafted the entire roster, it’s silly to judge each individual move, or even each rumor, as some sort of disaster. As much as you like or dislike the Mets decision makers, they DO know more about baseball and player evaluation than we do.

 

As with all teams, it’s winning that matters. If the Mets are winning consistently and fighting for a playoff spot, the fans and interest will come and people will at least momentarily forget about payroll numbers and financial crises. The offseason provides little else to talk about, so that’s what we get. You don’t have to believe in the Mets, but baseball tends to turn out way differently than anyone expects. Every year players succeed where everyone assumes they’ll fail, and fail where fans are comfortable in them succeeding. No one really thought much of Scott Hairston, or Marlon Byrd, or R.A. Dickey when they were signed, but they ended up making big contributions.

 

If you want to roll your eyes and make jokes, that’s fine. It’s a long offseason and the hot stove season is often full of lots of silliness. Just remember that there are a billion rumors and most of them mean nothing. GMs, owners, “persons with knowledge of the situation” all have their own agendas and telling you the truth about every plan they have is not one of them. Sometimes a lot of small moves that seem meaningless end up working together to make a fairly solid team. Other times seemingly solid moves end up in injury or poor production and the money is as good as not spent. There are a lot of moving parts to the Met roster this offseason, and it just seems silly to assume where they’re going to land, how they’re going to do, and then mock them for it.

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Disappointment Over A Good Mets Trade

There is no doubt that the trade Sandy Alderson is in the process of pulling off is a good one. We still aren’t aware of some of the finer details, but the Mets are adding two top prospects, John Buck, and a third minor leaguer, for R.A. Dickey, Josh Thole, and a minor prospect. Dickey is one of the best pitchers in the league, and he still may be a top of the line starter for a couple of years, but the Mets are adding players that may still be having a positive impact on the team six years from now. It’s certainly possibly they may not flourish, particularly the much farther away Noah Syndergaard, but the probability favors the Mets in that regard.

 

The problem is the immediate future. Travis d’Arnaud, the catcher the Mets are receiving, will probably be up to the majors very soon, if not on Opening Day. John Buck will likely be on the team in the interim, and probably shift to a backup role when d’Arnaud gets called up. Together it’s unlikely they provide as much value as R.A. Dickey, and that means a team already under .500 is probably taking a step back before pushing forward. That’s disheartening for most fans, whose number one concern is the current roster of players on the field. Many of us would rather root for the guys we have to succeed, particularly when they’re great ones like Dickey, than reinvest emotion in new guys that are merely promising to be great. Ultimately though what the fans want doesn’t matter because winning is what brings in the fans, the attention, and the money. It’s not out of the question that d’Arnaud plus the pitcher the Mets replace Dickey with is worth more than Dickey and Thole would’ve been, but it doesn’t seem like a good bet for 2013 nor the type of improvement the Mets need to climb out of 4th place if it does happen.

 

That’s where the disappointment comes in; this trade does not make the Mets better in the foreseeable future. Sure, it raises the probability that they are better down the line, but it’s also important that this player is going to be cheap and under team control for a long time. Fans can forgive losing star players, whether homegrown ones or adopted ones, when the team placed in front of them excites and captures their attention, but so far I’m not so sure the 2013 version is in position to do that. Especially if we don’t get an impact bat for the outfield and instead go with Lucas Duda, Kirk Nieuwenhuis and a platoon of Mike Baxter and 2013’s version of Scott Hairston. We heard a lot about the present value of contracts with the David Wright negotiations, and that concept applies to winning seasons too; a winning season in the present is worth more than one in the future. Good process only gets you so far, and there are plenty of inherent risks between now and then that could sabotage the plan. A clearly improved 2013, even if it ultimately falls short, could create the excitement that draws fans in, fans that will continue to come in 2014. The message lately has felt like it’s not worth investing in this team yet, which keeps ticket sales and revenue down; revenue that could make the job of creating a winner in 2014 easier. It’d be unfair to assume Sandy Alderson’s going to take the rest of the offseason off at this juncture, meaning he could still improve the team and the outfield, but it’s hard to see the type of players coming that give this team a “If everything breaks right” chance at the playoffs.

 

As always with the Mets these last three years, the money question is always looming. Partial sales, which included Sterling money invested in the Mets, helped pay off loans and seemed to at least point the Mets in the right direction. Allusions were made to a payroll in 2013 at or above 2012’s number. The deferred contracts and negotiations seem to point in a different direction, although it is still possible that Sandy Alderson spends most of that money on players that make the Mets better. It’s never a good idea to expect much direct truth from a general manager, that’s not their job, but given the message that the actions are sending it feels pretty hard to do more than guess at the plan. The Mets appear to be in a holding pattern and I just hope they get clearance to land before they run out of gas.

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Reinforcements Should Come Soon

The Mets have a big second half of July before the trading deadline.  They play nine big games against the two teams closest to them in the division.  If the Mets are going to make some roster moves, whether it’s by trade acquisition or minor league promotion, you’d like to seem the do so coming out of the break.  In fact, you do already hear rumors of the Mets being linked to possible relievers on the trade market.

 

There is still a lot of baseball to be played, but it’s important to put your best team forward when you’re playing the teams you’re probably going to be fighting for a playoff spot down to the wire.  A strong second half showing in July could get the Mets into first place and allow them to put the pressure on the other teams in the division.

 

The Nationals have talked about limiting Steven Strasburg’s innings this season.  That’s easier to do if they maintain a 3.5 game lead, but if the Mets can push them to the bubble, it forces them to make some hard decisions.  The Braves collapsed last year, and as this season comes to a close that could weigh on their minds.  Why give them a cushion to be comfortable with? Keep the doubt that they’re good enough fresh in their minds as the second half rolls along.

 

The flip side of this is R.A. Dickey.  The Mets have talked about the possibility of using Dickey on short rest and/or in relief if they need to.  Knuckleballer or not, he’s still 37 years old.  It’d be nice to not have to use this bullet, at least not too often, in September.  Getting into first and maintaining a playoff spot would allow them to not have to squeeze every last drop of production out of Dickey and keep him fresher for a possible playoff series.

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Optimistic Stuff Going On

It often feels like the mainstream media has a story they want to write, and look for the facts to fit the story rather than watching the game and writing a story that matches the facts.  They can get hung up on narratives they like and beat them to death.  Part of the reason I named this blog what I did was to counter the idea that the Mets are cursed, never spend, are inept, or Latin-biased, etc etc.

 

One of the common stories this year was that the Mets are broke and can’t afford Reyes, so they will trade him.   They stuck to this; it seemed like every day there was another story about how they’d have to trade him, or who would be a good suitor.  As the season went on some of these writers had the occasion to glance down at the field, and happened to notice how unbelievably awesome Jose Reyes is, and how much he is adored by Mets fans.  Slowly but surely more articles came out suggesting, as many bloggers have been writing all along, that the Mets should and could keep Reyes.   It’s so refreshing to watch a player that’s just that awesome, that leads the league in so many categories, and is having a blast doing it.   That his great season has caused writers to use the delete button more than usual is just a bonus.

 

Speaking of which, here’s a post from Ed Ryan at Mets Fever that wonders if maybe the Mets should be thinking about adding, not subtracting, players at the trading deadline.  Personally I think the Mets will add someone.  Alderson has been known in the past to like to wheel and deal, and I suspect this year will be no different.  He’s claimed to this point to have the financial ability to do so.  This doesn’t mean no one will get traded though, it just means it doesn’t have to be a fire sale.   Sandy Alderson won’t need to trade major league pieces for guys that may or may not help the team at some future time.  He’s got the options of trading major league talent for equal major league talent, maybe shuffling off an extra bat for an extra relief pitcher, or trading prospects for a good player that’s still got a couple of years left on his contract to help the team out both this year and next.

 

Winning or losing, it’s never too early to start bringing in talented players.  Even if you don’t believe the Mets are one or two players away from making the playoffs, if you make them one better right now, that’s less work needed to do in the offseason.  I expect a lot of activity in July, and some of it will probably be pretty exciting.