Jack Flynn - Rosario Status

Even the most optimistic of Mets fans have to see the writing on the wall by now.

The 2017 season is a disaster. The Mets are not a good bet to finish with a winning record this season, let alone to miraculously claw their way into a playoff spot. All the promise from Spring Training has blown up in spectacular fashion, leaving only a dust cloud of pulled hamstrings, torn lats and broken careers.

As is often the case in situations like these, the call has gone up from all corners to promote intriguing prospects and give those young bucks a chance to succeed where older veterans have failed. The fan base has been clamoring for Amed Rosario in particular, especially with both regular middle infielders on the disabled list and the Mets resorting to an up-the-middle combination of Jose Reyes, TJ Rivera and Gavin Cecchini in recent days.

Rosario’s continued residency in Las Vegas has been a source of anguish for many, and the theories about the Mets’ reluctance to promote him reflect the general distrust that fans still have of ownership and the front office. But the Super-2 deadline has long since passed, so there’s no longer an economic incentive to keep Rosario down.

Why, then, is Rosario still in Las Vegas? Perhaps Sandy Alderson’s reluctance to promote him lies primarily with concerns about the atmosphere in the Mets’ clubhouse.

One has to assume that these are dark days in Flushing. Even if the roster was stocked with professionals who continued going about their business as one would hope, it would be impossible for those players not to harbor a sense of disappointment about how 2017 is turning out. A certain malaise is to be expected.

Add that to the fact that there are six position players who are pending free agents – and a seventh (Asdrubal Cabrera) at the mercy of a team option that is no guarantee to be picked up – and there is a real danger of the locker room turning into a very selfish place over the next three months.

Over half of the Mets’ position players are playing for their next contract right now – is that really the most appropriate atmosphere for the Mets to bring a potential franchise cornerstone into? What position player is going to want to mentor the Next Big Thing and contribute to his development process with no guarantee that they will even be teammates next season?

Take all of this with the proverbial grain of salt, of course; writers love to speculate about the mood of clubhouses, and even daily beat writers have far less of a handle on that mood than they would like to believe. But in the absence of a more concrete and logical explanation for the delay, it is only natural than fans begin to speculate on what the Mets’ motives with Rosario really are. Protecting him from any negativity that may have naturally infected the clubhouse certainly seems like a logical consideration.

Amed Rosario is going to be very good one day, but the gulf between the Mets and the playoff spot this season is already far too wide for any one player to bridge. Rosario is not going to carry the Mets to the playoffs. Rosario and Dominic Smith are not going to carry the Mets to the playoffs. Rosario, Smith and any passel of players the Mets could promote from their farm system will not be enough to carry the Mets into the playoffs.

The bet here is that Rosario will be up with the Mets on or around August 1, after Alderson shuffles some deck chairs off of the Titanic in exchange for prospects that will also be auditioning for a job in 2018. That will clear the way for Rosario and others to experience two months of low pressure baseball, while mitigating the uncomfortable possibility of playing alongside disappointed veterans whose jobs they are being groomed to take.