Mack’s Sunday’s Thoughts - 1-24-16 – Antonio Bastardo, VSL, Long Term Deals, Niuman Romero, Yoenes Cespedes

  

Good morning.

You have to love the addition of LHRP Antonio Bastardo. He comes to the Mets after pitching 57.1 innings for the Pittsburgh Pirates, striking out 64, and posting a stat line of 2.98, 1.13.

I also love the fact that it’s a 2-year deal. Two years is a great contract for + players that cost you in this range. It also gives you the opportunity to throw some prospects names (Josh Smoker, Akeel Morris) out on the telephones in hopes of producing a trade that can further help this team.

I’ll tell you this… Bartolo Colon will be moving to the pen during the season, Josh Edgin will fully heal, and Jenrry Mejia will also be back. You can’t fit all of these on a 25-man roster and some of the existing pitchers are going to have to go.

My guess is guys like Dario Alvarez, Edgin, Erik Goeddel, Smoker, Morris, and Carlos Torres are ripe for moving.

The Venezuelan Summer League (VSL) has shut down. They were down to four teams (Cubs, Phils, Tampa, and Detroit), but the Cubs decided to pull out this year and that toppled the blocks.

The Mets had a VSL team once but decided to double up in the Domincan instead and move away from the politically charged country. The sad part is two-fold… one, Venezuela continues to have a lot of prospect baseball talent, but two, people from these two countries basically don’t like each other.

Teams are going to have to work out a venue to feature some of thes players. I do expect the four above mentioned teams to probably add an additional DSL team, but there may be an opportunity here for the Mets to snatch away a few of the 16-year old prospects that will be available soon.

Gary sent –

Hi Mack, Liked your Podcast with Gary Mac the other day and although I agree with you guys for the most part I disagree when it comes to the current makeup of the club considering that the additions are O.K. But, to put a real exclamation point on this off season they should have also  signed Hayward and traded for Chapman no excuses. They said after the Madoff news broke that it wouldn't affect the baseball operations....yeah right. Then they said when we started to win they would add to payroll ....another yeah right.  So although I'm happy with last years results and I know the current ownership will last longer than I will it's really hard for me to get my head around not going for the throat when we had the chance. After all it wasn't that long ago that adding Beltran and Delgado were smart prudent moves by a club really going for it and even though it didn't work out the way we wanted it gave us exciting baseball deep into Sept. and filled the seats which had to make ownership happy so I guess I long for the "new old days" and hope they don't blow this golden opportunity. Thanks, Gary Seagren

          Mack – Thanks for the email, Gary.

          Gary, I truly believe that all the moves and non-moves the Mets did in this of-season take a back door to the resigning of Yoenes Cespedes. We could spend hours debating Hayward, Beltran, etc., but the bottom line is that the current Mets management and ownership is not going to offer anyone a deal past three years. It just isn’t the team we currently root for.

          My hopes are that the exceptions to this will be extended contracts to current Mets under team control (i.e. Familia, deGrom). We need to get back to building our team long term from within.

The Met signed 30-year old SS/3B Niuman Romero, who played SS last year for AAA-Nashville in the PCL (234-AB, .278). Just what we needed. Another AAA shortstop.

I would think there is a remote possibility that you’ll see him fill the third base slot left open in St. Lucie with the suspension of Eudor Garcia.

The three year deal with Yoenes Cespedes, coupled with the Bastardo signing, should put to rest any fan criticism that the team isn’t committed to the immediate future of this team.

I’m not sure what this means regarding the amount of games Conforto, de Aza, and Lagares get, but frankly, I don’t really care right now. It’s a rare day that the Mets have an abundance of ‘bat’ talent, especially in the outfield.