Reese Kaplan -- Debating the Great Unknown(s)

As we enter the final weekend of the Mets 2020 baseball season, some are upset about finishing out of the playoffs yet again, others are forgiving with the huge number of factors changing the expected roster, and others are cautiously optimistic with the arrival of Steve Cohen to force the Wilpons out of Citifield.  

Right now there's a whole lot of uncertainty for 2021 aside from the hiring of former GM Sandy Alderson to serve as team President.  Beyond that, everyone awaits for the voting to take place in November which will finally relegate the Wilpon nightmare to the history books where sports administration courses will assign students to read case studies on what not to do with a professional team.  

 

Many of the Mets fans are already waiting to throw parades and to bid feverishly on the available free agent resources available once the World Series ends.  (Remember World Series championships?  I'm sixty years old and in my 58 years of following the Mets there have been exactly two victories for the team from Queens.  In fact, the last one was so long ago that if it was a player who last graced the field 34 seasons ago, he'd be well into retirement by now.)  

 

The questions to be answered are not new.  What will they do about pending free agents like Marcus Stroman whose value probably plummeted this season through injury and then opting out.  What about the short termers whose paperwork is done, like Rick Porcello, Michael Wacha, Justin Wilson and others?  They don't appear to be critical pieces to building a championship and I'd hate for familiarity to be the justification for a return engagement.  

 

We've already discussed the various positional vacancies and duplications the club must address moving forward.  There are too many good hitting but bad fielding outfielders, too many middle infielders, an expensive catcher with an option coming off a bad season and virtually no pitchers to start or relieve.  Yikes!  That's a major to-do list for the front office to fix.

 

Speaking of them, who exactly will be there underneath owner Cohen and president Alderson?  Will Brodie Van Wagenen be given the third year of his deal?  The previous regime never liked to pay for the outgoing guy as well as the incoming one.  That philosophy could change under new leadership, but no one knows for sure.  

 

There has been a lot done during his regime that seems questionable, but to be fair to the man he has made good draft choices and obtained a few interesting players via trade or free agency.  Now you could debate all day and night about whether sending away the cream of the minor league crop was a smart way to do so, but folks need to step back and see what Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz have done this season.  People rush to point out the good trades like J.D. Davis, but then do not put much stock into the smaller acquisitions, some of which have turned out to be positive.  

Like a rookie ballplayer adjusting to his new role in the majors, super agent Van Wagenen is learning on the job and with so many other things needing changing, it's entirely possible that not for cheapness sake but for the goal of maintaining some consistency in the ranks that he will be given another year to show what he can do.  It also gives the team more time to investigate other options rather than rushing into the castoffs who won't have had time to learn the organization in time for the Winter Meetings.  

 

A similar situation exists with manager Luis Rojas.  He has not had a consistent roster, had no pitching, no defense and no baserunning.  He did have hitting and the club produced some prodigious numbers in that regard.  The question is whether or not supplementing the roster appropriately will allow Rojas to shine or is he also a victim of last minute hiring and not yet prepared for the big leagues?  The Mets faced a similar situation for a few years of Mickey Callaway and were prepared to do it again with Carlos Beltran, so Rojas' only gripe is that he was given the reigns on January 23rd, just before the scheduled Spring Training was set to begin.  That didn't give him much prep time and it shows.  

 

So as the club proceeds into the great unknown, it's possible to take many of these options in various sequences and hope for the best.  Change is not always a good thing but it's also not always something bad.  Anyone watching the Mets knows there is a lot of work to be done.  What will fill our heads between now and Spring Training (assuming the pandemic is under control by then) are thoughts of what needs to be done first and how.  Right now it's all a matter of guessing.