Calling Con Ed – Is Solving the Power Outage the Mets’ Biggest Priority?

It seems you can’t turn on a computer these days without being assaulted by stories proclaiming the Mets’ “big interest” in now free-from-the-Yankees Curtis Granderson, he of the back-to-back 40 home run seasons aiming for the short porch in Yankee stadium.

Lost in the drool about seeing him rounding third in a slow, celebratory trot is a closer look at what he doesn’t do – get on base. It’s almost as if when they decided not to get into the Shin Sin Choo OBP sweepstakes as it’s too rich for their blood, they went to the polar opposite in finding someone who doesn’t get on base much at all. If you remove the one outlier of 2011, his OPB numbers have descended from a hardly lofty .327 in his final year in Detroit in 2009 to an abysmal .317 last year.

For a frame of reference, that’s inferior to what Ike Davis, Eric Young, Justin Turner, Josh Satin, Lucas Duda, Daniel Murphy and David Wright delivered for the Mets. Granderson in hitters’ ballparks averages 30 HRs and 83 RBIs while hitting .261 and whiffing 159 times. Add in the black hole that is CitiField and these numbers should plummet, particularly when the now 32 year old Granderson coming off injury enters his twilight years.

If this target to “improve” the offense was an isolated and odd plan to spend the limited budget, Tuesday stories leaked out about the Mets’ interest in Chris Young – this time the one who plays the outfield instead of the one whose pitching arm is duct taped to his body. He once hit 32 HRs for the Arizona Diamondbacks in the year 2007. To give you a frame of reference how long ago that was, the iPhone wasn’t even released for sale until the September pennant races were wrapping up. Do you know who also once hit 32 home runs? Ike Davis!

Consider Chris Young “Curtis Granderson Lite” – less fulfilling in terms of power, batting average and strikeouts (though he has K’d as many as 165 times in a season which still pales next to the Grandyman’s 195). Can he put the ball over the fence? Yes. Can he get on base? For his career that stat stands at a paltry .315. Yet here we are hearing the Mets want to bring his home run swing (on the rare time it connects) to the toughest park in the league in which to put the ball over the fence.

What’s frustrating about this off season is not necessarily the fact they bailed on the eminently reasonably priced Jose Abreu without even bidding, that they let the one-year-wonder Marlon Byrd go to a division rival or that they have publicly declared nearly all of their roster untradeable (thank you, Jeff Wilpon). No, what’s particularly galling is that when they finally have some money to spend they look at players ill-suited for the type of ballpark in which they play. While Tom Glavine may have struck a nerve so many years ago by proclaiming, “Chicks dig the long ball,” what they seem to need even more are people who can get on base, people who can hit doubles up the gap and people who are on the right side of 30.

It’s early in the preseason and a lot can certainly happen, but it’s a carbon copy of the previous 3 Alderson Hot Stove Seasons when he foolishly waited for the market to come to him and wound up with the likes of the Shaun Marcums and Collin Cowgills of this world while letting Jose Reyes walk away for nothing. While inking Marlon Byrd for his age 36 and 37 seasons may not have been the smartest way to spend $16 million, it signals what aggressive teams do when they actually act on their plans to improve. When the follow up headlines are a Phillies’ deal to land slugger Jose Bautista you have to wonder if Alderson went over his allocation of minutes on his cell phone. Division rivals try to improve and the Mets make overtures towards the all-or-nothing twins. Who’s next, Adam Dunn?