- 2010
3 hours 7 min ago - great
4 hours 1 min ago - Final NL East Standings
3 days 1 hour ago - First Base
2 weeks 4 days ago - My Grade is a C+
2 weeks 5 days ago - Antarctica
3 weeks 1 day ago - It's An Honor
4 weeks 3 days ago - Just A Test
4 weeks 4 days ago - Not Too Excited
5 weeks 6 days ago - Not THAT Bad
5 weeks 6 days ago
Is That All?
I can't help but think as the offseason dwindles into the past, "Is that all?" The Mets signed Jason Bay which was a big signing that we were all hoping for. Jose Reyes appears to be healthy and ready for Spring Training as is Johan Santana. That's good news. Of course Carlos Beltran's knee surgery offsets some of that good news. I think that the improved health of some key players in the offseason and the acquisition of Bay are good things but still fall short of the expectations most fans had going into this offseason.
First base is an unresolved issue. Daniel Murphy is a decent player but can't replace the power of a healthy Carlos Delgado. The Mets have added Fernando Tatis but he's really a good bench player and not a guy who I think will be able to come close to Delgado's numbers. The Mets need another big bat besides Bay and 1st bast is the place for that bat. Second base is not resolved either. Luis Castillo did better than expected last season but what about Orlando Hudson? He was available and evidently a pretty good bargain.at $5 million. The Mets will go with Omir Santos behind the plate after trading Ramon Castro (oh what a mistake) and getting nothing out of Brian Schneider offensively. I say give Santos a shot at full time. He showed some real promise last season. Center field became an unexpected issue with the Beltran surgery. We're set at the corners with Jeff Francoeur and Jason Bay. But center is very important defensively at Citi Field. I think Angel Pagan can do pretty good in center. Gary Matthews Jr. as his backup is a real stinker. The guy is a bum but the Mets got him because the Angels were paying his bloated $10 million salary.
If I were to give the Mets a C in grading their position player moves I'll have to give them an F for pitching. With Oliver Perez always a question mark, John Maine coming off surgery and Jon Niese still a rookie and coming off a bad injury the Mets need something more in the starting rotatione to make me feel good. We didn't get it. Even worse, we now have Roy Halladay on the Phillies. I know there wasn't much available after Halladay and John Lackey but for heavens sake Omar Minaya should've got into one of those deals. Oh well.
Between the C and the F I think the offseason moves amount to a D rating. As a result I'm not feeling to hot about the Mets chances in 2010. I know I should be more positive since it's still pre spring training. I'm just not feeling it though. How about you?
Just A Test
I needed to test something so I'm adding this comment.
My Grade is a C+
Listen, it's easy and popular to throw the Mets management under the bus when we have so many ?'s and saw so many potential fits move to other teams. But I think, considering the circumstances, our offseason was really not as bad as most collumnists are making it out to be.
Consider Omar's position to start the offseason: he's coming off a terrible year, half his team still had injury questions, he had major ? at 6 positions (1B, 2B, C, LF, SP, and RP) and little did he know but in a few months he would lose his best hitter for the first couple months due to surgery. None of his players were considered tradeable, and the free agent market had uncharacteristically slim pickings. That is such an IMPOSSIBLE situation for a GM! Nevertheless, Omar found a way to successfully fill the RP and LF holes and, Barajas pending, may have filled the C hole. As for the rest, it's simply unreasonable to expect us to fill every hole with a star given the above circumstances, so Omar did the next best thing: if you can't get 1 great player, get a bunch of decent ones and let them battle it out in camp. Competition breeds results, and we will have lots of it in camp. Even if barajas doesn't sign we still have 4 capable-if-not-exciting catchers in Thole, Santos, Blanco, and Coste to compete in training camp, as well as 4 capable 1B with Murphy, Jacobs, Tatis, and Evans. Newly signed Takahashi and Fogg will compete with Neise and Nieve for the 5th spot in the rotation, another 4 man battle. Not all of these players will open the year on the Mets roster, but the ones that do will have performed admirably enough in camp to quiet concerns about our vacancies there.
And the more you analyze some of the non-moves Omar made, the more they sort of make sense. Lackey was overrated, not worth the money Boston gave him. We offered Piniero and Molina more than they eventually signed for, what more could we have done there? Since we couldn't unload Castillo a Hudson signing was financially implausible, and Sheets/Wang/Harden/Bedard each carried huge injury risk to a team that cannot risk injuries. With the acquisitions of Santana and K-Rod in recent years, and Beltran and Delgado not long before that, we Mets fans have become accustomed to plugging our holes with huge name players. And this year we continued this trend with Bay, we merely had too many holes to plug them all. We couldn't sign Bay AND Lackey AND Hudson AND Molina AND Sheets AND Piniero AND LaRoche/Delgado AND gotten RP help, especially in such a dismal FA market. We had to pick and choose which of those were worth the dough and which weren't, and while it's frustrating to not get a pitcher I feel we did the best we could.
At the end of the day the central goal of any GM in any offseason is to improve the team. With the acquisitions of Escobar, Igarashi, Jacobs, Takahashi, Matthews, and most notably Bay, while only losing Delgado, I think we did that, perhaps not as much as we'd hoped, but still. Sure Beltran's injury is a downer, but remember that's only temporary and was entirely out of managements control. So I give us a C+ on our offseason and feel that if we can stay healthy the postseason is a very real possibility.
First Base
If we can't bash the management then who can we bash darn it! ;)
As far as first base goes I have to say that I'm not particularly fond of the potential Murphy-Evans-Jacobs-Tatis platoon. Actually, I'm not fond of a platoon job at any position. Platoons really make it hard for one player to get into a groove. I think Mike Jacobs has the most potential to give the Mets some decent offensive numbers while at first base. But even that potential will be limited playing 80 or so games. Jacobs has averaged just over 20 home runs over the last few years and he hasn't had a .300 on base percentage the last two season. Notice that I said Jacobs has potential based on his season two years ago. Who knows if he can resurrect those numbers. My concern is that we won't get anyone's full potential and we need more offense. At the end of the day we'd be better off without the platoon with either Murphy or Jacobs getting a full shot at playing every day, with Tatis and the other guy playing a versatile role off the bench.
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