Reese Kaplan -- The Party's Over, Sandy, Time to Go Home

A lot has been written lately about bringing the old band back together and whether or not that is a good thing.  The apologists will point out that this club was beset by an extraordinary number of critical injuries and that the team that took the field in 2017 was the same as the one that got to the post-season in 2016.  The detractors will suggest that not taking the roster constructions steps necessary to improve, to have contingency plans in the event someone did not perform as expected and allowing the farm system to slide in the bottom five of all in major league baseball as an indictment of Sandy Alderson’s tenure.

Baseball is a business first and foremost. Hopefully it provides sufficient entertainment value that the fans will want to come out of the ballpark, watch the games, buy the hot dogs, take home souvenirs and advertisers will spend big bucks to run commercials.  That has not changed during the current regime, but the risk aversion has taken root and transformed a losing team inherited in 2010 into a long term downward spiral. 

Why so bitter?  What has been done to deserve this condemnation?  What about the World Series in 2015 (doesn’t that seem a decade ago already?) and what about the post-season in 2016?

Well, what has been the Alderson way since taking the reins?  First of all is the now infamous “waiting for the market to come to him” approach to building a roster.  While patience could sometimes net relative bargains as players become a bit more desperate to land a job, it can also mean you’re left to choose from among the scraps better teams have passed over in trying to improve their rosters.

No one was the least bit surprised, for example, when the Mets inked recently suspended and subsequently cut Jose Reyes because he was available for minimum wage.  Ditto Adrian Gonzalez.  On Reyes the move has had its ups and downs and everyone sincerely hopes Gonzalez once again captures his All-Star form.  However, there’s no guarantee.  For once, however, there are some alternatives in the forms of Dom Smith, Jay Bruce and Wilmer Flores. 

Then there’s his passivity during each off season.  While other clubs try to improve in the attempt to be competitive, Alderson’s MO has been to hold off on adding anything unless the club finds itself in contention.  Think back to 2015 when the offense was so bad that bench players like Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe became middle-of-the-order threats.  Ever since that season he was able to use his then still reasonably attractive farm system to land players, he has lazily fallen back on that method until the well ran pretty much dry.  He pushed away players such as Akeel Morris, Michael Fulmer and others who were pretty highly regarded to bring in Yoenis Cespedes which history revisionists will write as a stroke of genius (conveniently forgetting he was the consolation prize after the Carlos Gomez deal fell apart).  Sometimes you step into great luck and Alderson certainly saved his job with that serendipitous unplanned transaction, but then stepped in something else bidding against himself not once but twice for Cespedes’ services while not holding him accountable for conditioning.

People have been clamoring for the Mets to land players such as Josh Harrison but by now under the Alderson regime the cupboard is pretty much bare.  The combination of peddling your cheap chips for sometimes mediocre or over-the-hill veterans and extremely poor draft selections have the team now an organizational laughingstock without the pipeline of high quality talent comparable to what other teams have available to build for the future.  I’m not indicting any individual player.  Like any other fan I hope each minor leaguer defies the often-wrong experts and becomes a major league star.  However, the franchise is now far worse than they were when the Wilpons handed the baton to Sandy Alderson and nothing that’s happened this off-season has suggested it will improve. 

There are some positives.  There is a new manager who was considered by everyone an out-of-the-box decision very unlike the Mets.  The fact he commands relatively little money and has almost no track record on which to challenge his boss must be taken into consideration.  They’ve brought back Omar Minaya whose eye for talent was well regarded.  That’s a good sign as well.  They even signed a brand new major league caliber player in Anthony Swarzak. 

I won’t go over the well-worn territory of the contract that crippled the franchise.  Instead, let’s look at his 2014 off-season which brought such luminaries as Kyle Farnsworth, Dana Eveland and Buddy Carlyle into the fold.  Oh yeah – he added the gasping for breath Bobby Abreu, too. His big money (by Mets standards) contract for an older Curtis Granderson was a bit head scratching and senior citizen (by baseball standards) pitcher Bartolo Colon was met with some surprise as well. Understandably they finished under .500 at 79-83. 

In 2015 to help prepare for the World Series run that would follow he did even less.  He made a sub optimal (the same phrase I used at the time) and hasty free agent acquisition of Michael Cuddyer and his Coors-inflated bat.  He added journeyman John Mayberry, Jr. who wouldn’t make it through the halfway point of the season.  He made two last minute trades on March 30^th, one was bad and one would have been good if not for an injury that limited the player to just 7 games.  Alex Torres (and his hat) are just a bad memory now, but Jerry Blevins has proven to be a tremendous acquisition.  No one given up in those deals – Cory Mazzoni, Matt den Dekker – went on to anywhere near the success Blevins found in New York during 2016 and 2017.  However, what’s important to note is the track record that followed – the reacquisition of familiar faces – Kirk Nieuwenhuis, Logan Verrett and Eric Young, Jr. – foreshadowed his lazy approach that would follow.  To his credit, other than Fulmer, none of the players he gave up to assemble his 2015 World Series team mid-season amounted to much – Darwin Frias, Luis Cessa, Casey Meisner, John Gant, Robert Whalen, Miller Diaz or Matt Koch. 

In 2016 you’d think they would want to build on their surprising success of 2015 but come the off-season their first acquisition was another lightning-in-a-bottle deal for Jim Henderson.  Then there was a trade of a major league player for a major league player when Jon Niese was sent to Pittsburgh for Neil Walker.  Then Asdrubal Cabrera was signed to replace the woeful bat of Ruben Tejada to play shortstop.  These two acquisitions were positives and very much out of character for Alderson.  He repeated his journeyman outfielder mistake, this time with Alejandro de Aza.  However, it was his inactions that would draw headlines, allowing potential free agents to depart, including Daniel Murphy, Tyler Clippard, Carlos Torres, Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe.  His bargain hunting ways allowed him to acquire the truly mediocre James Loney for a single dollar to replace Lucas Duda’s bat.  Then the reunions began again with the return of Kelly Johnson, Jose Reyes, Jon Niese and others.  Jay Bruce’s acquisition from the Reds turned out to be highway robbery (despite his very rocky start to a Mets career), but as well all know, they were one and done.

So, after going backwards in 2016 he did even less during the off-season.  He added not a single major league caliber player to the roster for the 2017 season and not surprisingly they slipped further backwards in the standings.  When he finally threw in the towel in July, he peddled away players like Lucas Duda, Curtis Granderson, Jay Bruce, Addison Reed and Neil Walker, receiving seven relief pitchers, in return, not a single rated top-30 talent from another organization for any of them.  (As evidence of the weakness of his own farm system, several of the arms acquired soared into that position for the Mets).  Oh yeah, he did acquire AJ Ramos, too...

That brings us to the current season.  Welcome Anthony Swarzak.  Welcome minimum wage Adrian Gonzalez.  Those are the new faces.  Welcome back Jose Reyes.  Welcome back Jay Bruce.  If reports are accurate that the Mets are out on Josh Harrison then don’t be surprised to see Neil Walker welcomed back as well.  It’s not a formula for success to reassemble what didn’t work in the past.  There is always hope the pitching staff is not injured and the outfielders and first baseman will remain healthy.  However, hope is not a strategy for professionals. 

The off-season is not yet over and it’s possible things can change but it certainly seems that the plans of Sandy Alderson not to draft the best players, not to sign the best free agents, not to make off-season trades (essentially punting half the season) and trading away all the top talent in the system have made it very difficult for the Mets to build for the future.  Please retire.