Reese Kaplan -- When Recycling Doesn't Make Sense

Political agendas aside, recycling is all the rage.  Whether it’s plastic soda bottles made into high tech fleece fabrics, aluminum cans reformed into new aluminum cans or glass bottles into shiny glass bottles.  What’s old and useless can be given new life and repurposed instead of merely discarded.

Would that the same could be done for athletes, specifically baseball players.  You relegate them to the scrap heap when they are no longer viable or cost effective for winning games, yet somehow as they age and become even less capable their value should continue to decrease and their usefulness should also become suspect.  While there’s something to be said for experience, the fact is that the game is more physical than mental and reflexes, muscles and energy levels all deteriorate over time.

Winning teams seem to try to strike a balance between youth and veteran leadership.  The Mets already have the latter in the forms of folks like Yoenis Cespedes, Jacob deGrom, David Wright and others.  The previous regime did what it could to suppress youth.  Rather than try to acquire youth in the forms of under-30 players, the Mets took a curious path and embraced recycling.

What do I mean by that?  Well, let’s take a look at who is back for a second or third tour of duty with the club…Jose Reyes, Asdrubal Cabrera, Jay Bruce, Jerry Blevins, Matt den Dekker, Ty Kelly…even Jason Vargas qualifies.  It is both lazy and unimaginative to bring back the same players who did not help you win in the past rather than looking to add people who might infuse new energy and YOUTH to the composition of the roster. 

Now you can’t go and make blanket statements.  Jerry Blevins for one deserves whatever he gets as he’s been a terrific acquisition for, ironically, Matt den Dekker.  Some of the other reunions are puzzling.  Neither den Dekker nor Kelly have done anything to suggest they belong on a major league roster and hopefully are merely just filler in AAA.  Jose Reyes was inexpensive and probably a worthy bench piece IF deployed that way, but recent history suggests he may get extended looks as a starting player.  Asdrubal Cabrera has shown his age more and more, yet they chose to pick up his option rather than look for alternatives. In fact, I couldn't decide if I was having a Terry Collins flashback or Cabrera was not 100% when I saw Jose Reyes starting at 2B yesterday.  Adrian Gonzalez was literally picked off the scrap heap of released players while younger Dom Smith is likely ticketed for Las Vegas. Jay Bruce is what he is – a streaky power hitter who plays slightly below average defense and offers no baserunning speed.  Was he the best option for the outfield?  Maybe…but where else did you look?  

I hope for the best but I also would have been planning for the deterioration of players as they age.  The whole selloff last year netted only relief pitchers, yet ironically the first outside acquisition Sandy Alderson made was for -- you guessed it -- a relief pitcher.

Recently Sandy Alderson dropped a big hint endorsing John Ricco as being ready to run the whole show.  Some say he’s already pulling most of the strings.  If so, things are not likely to change from what you’ve seen.  If the season is successful, then this criticism is for naught.  However, as a project planner it seems curious to me that the formula you implement in the hopes of success includes using the very same resources that didn’t work in the past.  In project management you’re supposed to read “Lessons Learned” or “After Action Review” documents to understand how not to repeat mistakes.  Food for thought…