Reese Kaplan -- On Motorcycles and Trading

Also at Mack's Mets:

There's a long preface necessary to make my point about Mets potential trades, but the analogy is solid.  

Back in 2013 I was involved in a bad motorcycle accident.  Well, to be truthful, it was a bad scooter accident but the motor vehicle agency gave me a motorcycle endorsement on my license so that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it!  I broke seven ribs, a foot and a thumb when I T-boned a Chevy Aveo when the woman driving it ran a stop sign. 

After a few months of recovery I wanted to get back in the saddle but the original ride was totaled.  My wife was always against me riding at all, and now with that crash she was dead set against it.  However, when she wound up buying a car she didn’t really need I think she was feeling guilty and actually spent a Saturday shepherding me around to the various motorcycle dealers.

Now at this time I was looking to transition to a real motorcycle but what caught her eye was something called a Suzuki Burgman which the magazines and riders term a “Maxi-Scooter”.  By that they mean it is motorcyclish in power but still retains the scooter format of storage under the seat, a platform for your feet and automatic transmission.  She said, “You’ll be safer on that thing – look at the size of it!”  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that in a collision with a car, it didn’t matter if you were on a Harley Road King and you ran into a Smart Car, you were going to lose that battle.

I thought about it and realized if this is what it was going to take to get her to mentally accept I was going to continue riding, then I’d get it, use it for awhile and then upgrade.  It turned out to be a pretty nice ride, actually, capable of going 115 mph (not that I ever tested that maximum speed, Officer), and held enough under the seat that I did Thanksgiving grocery shopping one year while riding it. 

I still had the itch to learn to shift gears and ride a “real” motorcycle, so I ventured up to Albuquerque and bought a mint condition Suzuki Savage that looked as if it has just rolled off the showroom floor despite being several years old.  For people not familiar with the bike, picture a chromed-out Harley that shrunk in the dryer.  A few Sundays in a quiet industrial park area and I was fully confident in the whole new riding experience.  I sold that little Suzuki for a nice profit but still had the big Suzuki Burgman in the garage.  In fact, the running joke at the time was between the Suzuki, my wife’s Fiat and my Porsche, my garage had morphed into a museum honoring the losers of World War II.

I listed the Burgman for sale for nearly a year in multiple places and never got a bite…not a single call, text nor email showing any interest whatsoever.  During that time I’d purchased a Moto Guzzi Griso which I still ride but the Burgman was collecting dust in the garage.  Finally I hit upon a plan to rid myself of it once and for all.

I headed to what is claimed to be the world’s largest Harley dealer here in El Paso and negotiated a deal to trade it in on a Buell 1125CR sport bike with a more upright seating position (as the fractured ribs didn’t make the hunched-over position of a typical sports bike comfortable).  The idea here was to get a bike that would be appealing to flip to someone else and thus get out from under the big Burgman.  After riding the Buell for about a year, I did just that, put it up for sale, broke even and was able to recoup my investment in the Burgman that I never wanted in the first place.  As I’m in the market again right now for an additional bike, I thought about the parallels of what the Mets may want to do going forward to rid themselves of their “Burgmans”. 

A.J. Ramos and Jeurys Familia are both slated to earn a decent paycheck this year.  They have something else in common.  Both are approaching free agency in 2019.  Right now Familia’s value has plummeted between his injury and his off-the-field antics last year.  Consequently the more marketable of the two of them is A.J. Ramos.  He’s older and earns more money which also makes him more desirable for the Mets to trade away. 

Then there’s former Gold Glover Juan Lagares.  He signed what was supposed to be a team-friendly contract after his one standout year in 2014 but he’s been both unable to stay on the field and never developed offensively.  Right now the club is on the hook for $6.5 million in 2018 and $9 million in 2019.  With the 3-year deal given to Jay Bruce and the long term deal for Yoenis Cespedes, that makes Michael Conforto your man in centerfield (if not a true centerfielder).  Consequently $15.5 million for a bench player over the next two years is not money well spent. 

If I’m Sandy Alderson, what I’d be doing right now is looking for his Buell.  It may not be the ideal player he wants or needs, but he must get out from under these contracts even if what comes back in return is a bit off-center from the “plan” that we’ve all never seen.  Towards that end, he should be scouring the contract statuses of various players on other teams that are set to expire at the end of 2018 or 2019 just as he did when he acquired A.J. Ramos to help offset the impending loss of Addison Reed.  By securing Ramos he gave himself the backup position of a second year of team control (albeit an expensive one) should Familia not recover. 

By looking to move these players you make it possible to strike a deal for someone previously thought to be out of your price range.  I’m not saying it will happen, but just for the sake of argument you wanted to target Robinson Cano for second base.  He’s currently earning $24 million and getting Seattle to take back Ramos, Lagares and the never appreciated Wilmer Flores means his incremental cost is a very palatable $6 million or so.  Now it would never happen because Seattle has playoff aspirations and it’s not just a one year commitment to Cano, but that’s philosophically how you would sell your Burgman and get your Buell.  Then if things went completely south, you could flip the Buell, er, Cano to get something else. 

Now even though second base is considered a position of need (or third if you shifted Cabrera to second), the fact remains that there are a lot of Buells out there who play different positions.  Remember, the end game is get rid of what you no longer want and to get back something another club may desire.  It's time to get creative.