Morning Report – August 2nd – Trade Deadline Aftereffect

  

Trade Deadline Aftereffect –

            I let Sandy and Company off the hook yesterday in my Morning Report.

            I’ve now had twenty-four hours to take a closer look at all the player movement and my stance hasn’t changed.

I do feel like I went to the dance and no one punched my ticket, but that wasn’t the fault of the guy that let me in the front door.

Most of the teams that participated in the big deals traded established players with another team’s established player. Frankly, our New York Mets are still not ready to do that. The Mets are still working on establishing a base team to build on and the last thing they should be doing is putting a deal together for a rental player or trading one of the few established stars they have in their everyday lineup.

I really like what I see in the progress of Travis d’Arnaud and Lucas Duda, but that doesn’t mean I should be trading Kevin Plawecki or Dominic Smith at this time of the building of this team.

I look at all these John Lester and David Price deals and the amount and quality of players the Mets would have to have sent would have crippled this team. Teams that can trade someone like Austin Jackson are teams that have options within their system to fill that slot and make the player (s) they have secured a positive in the organization. Same Yoenis Cespedes.

I’m not sure what I think about the Marlins deal (Marlins send Colin Moran, Jake Marisnick, Francis Martes, 2015 comp pick to Astros for Jarred Cosart, Kike Hernandez, Austin Wates). It looks to me like Miami is making a valiant effort to make a run for a wild card which I give them credit for. Frankly, I think they gave up far too much for adding a 4+ ERA SP4 (Cosart).

We had all hoped that the 2014 season was going to be the ‘Year of Mets Pitchers’. This was the year that all the good was supposed to return. And then, Matt Harvey went under the knife and the ‘super rotation’ was put back on the shelf for another season.

I’m writing this just after the end of the trading period on Thursday and, yes, I do have an empty feeling in my stomach. I wanted something to happen today. I wanted to write one of my ‘new Mets’ posts, but it’s not to be.

Do I think Sandy Alderson tried hard enough here or was he busy playing Mind Craft? Who knows. I have to have faith in his judgment in not dealing off either Daniel Murphy or Bartolo Colon for someone (s) of less talent.

All I want at this point in my 50+ years of following this team is a dominant, healthy 2015 rotation. Anything else that happens this season is a bonus, but I don’t want anything done to jeopardize next year. Please don’t overpitch any of the young arms, and don’t bring up guys like Noah Syndergaard (last night update... once again, 107 pitches in 6,0 IP, but 0-ER at home and 7-K/0-BB) unless they are ready to pitch every five days at the major league level.

(BTW… everybody talks about the downside of playing ball in Vegas because of the thin air…  I just checked and at 6:58 EST it was 108 degrees there. Did anyone ever consider the downside of playing baseball in that kind of heat?)

The pitching talent is here. There also is enough to trade for a new SS or LF, but you won’t be able to do this unless the player (s) you are offering are healthy. You, as fans, didn’t get either of these positions filled this week because your General Manager wasn’t willing to deal off a young, healthy starter. That probably is a good thing.

The future of this team lies in its strengths which is its young pitching. Don’t let any of these guys go anywhere until you have decided which ones are YOUR future.