Reese Kaplan -- Would Anyone in MLB Take Them?

Can we agree upon one thing from the Sandy Alderson era?  Hope is not a strategy!  Going into a season hoping the injured players come back healthy and remain that way, the ones who had a bad year will bounce back and the ones primed to take the next step actually will. 

Yup, it’s possible there will be peace in the Middle East, a resolution to the government gridlock and a cure for cancer will be found.  I’m not saying it’s not possible, but the track records and trends suggest plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Towards that end I got into a bit of a debate about the relative merits of playing both Juan Lagares and Todd Frazier regularly this year in the HOPES that they will somehow remain healthy and buck the statistical trends that have evolved over the recent courses of their careers.  Let’s take a look.

In 2014 Juan Lagares was a force in the outfield running down anything hit remotely in his direction and gunning down runners with that Howitzer of an arm.  He hit .281 with 4 HRs, 47 RBIs and 13 SBs.  Nothing stood out offensively, but the overall numbers were indeed positive and for that reason it seemed prudent for Sandy Alderson to lock up the outfielder to a long term deal. 

The injury parade began, including a 2015 including a period in which is vaunted arm went on hiatus and it looked as if he might even need surgery to correct it.  Over the period from 2015 through 2017 he delivered just a .253 AVG with 17 HRs and 65 RBIs but spread over 835 ABs.  He stole 18 bases over the 1.33 season’s worth of production as well. 

His much ballyhooed new swing seemed to be paying early dividends in 2018 when he started off with an outlier batting average of .339 over the course of almost a month with 0 HRs and 6 RBIs.  That would extrapolate to 0/36 over the course of a season, so unless he could sustain that heretofore unseen batting average, it looked like he was actually trending downhill with the bat. 

In the case of Todd Frazier, he was signed by the Mets after finishing out his career across town with the Yankees after having been peddled there from the White Sox.  He had a commendable season power-wise in 2017 with 27 HRs and 76 RBIs combined but with just a .213 batting average.  Even that number would be acceptable had he replicated his 2016 season in Chicago when he hit 40 HRs and drove in 98.  After all, the Mets withstood that type of production from Dave Kingman for several years.  During that 40 HR campaign he hit .225. 

This past season he replicated the .213 average upon his return to the National League where hegan his professional career with the Cincinatti Reds and remained there for 5 years.  His salary had gone as high as $12 million after having signed for $20.875 million over two years with the Sox.  Consequently when he was picked up for the sum of $8.5 million AAV for two years by Sandy Alderson, many applauded him for holding out to get good value. 

Of course, that bargain didn’t quite work out as expected.  Yes, he brought a professionalism to the team whose better players either were young (like Michael Conforto) or who shun the media spokesperson role (like Yoenis Cespedes).  He only had 408 ABs, hit just 18 HRs and drove in just 59 with an OPS under .700 and an OPS+ of under 100.  In other words, he was not very good.

So the question I posed to my group of friends clamoring for full seasons out of Todd Frazier at 3B and Juan Lagares in CF, is if they are so valuable would another team simply take them at full salary off the Mets’ hands, freeing up 3B for Jeff McNeil, 1B for Peter Alonso and CF for a solution yet to be determined?  The Mets would say – have at ‘em – just pay the $18.5 million due to them in 2019.  Any takers?  Bueller?

(And although he wasn't part of the original conversation, make the same offer to MLB for Jason Vargas' services, too...again, Bueller???)