By Chris Flanders December 7, 2020
We’ve reached that time in the hot stove season where real news is a bit hard to come by, which leads to rampant speculation about personnel for next season or picking apart details from last season. Even in Queens, where we have. Anew owner and made a move for the pen, there is still a lot of work to be done in the next 60 days or so. The charm of new ownership will never go away – we all know Steve Cohen has plenty of cash to take the team in a variety of directions, but there is not much concrete yet to analyze in terms of the 2021 season. Still a few recent things could use some thought.
The meltdown in Philadelphia has me mesmerized. Sure, the team took a hit with attendance like all other teams, but even with a quite high payroll of $177M, players had prorated salaries and only about $100M payrolls in 2016-2018. The impression fans have been told is that the Phillies were in strong shape to start spending big time, as the acquisition of Bryce Harper intimated. Are there more financial issues than we all thought?
Two things about the status in Philadelphia could play into the Mets hands. First, and about which much has already been debated, is the free agency of J.T. Realmuto. It hardly seems a team with simmering financial issues would all the sudden turn around and dump the fortune it is going to take to bring back Realmuto. Although the Phillies finished a shade above the Nationals and Mets, there wasn’t a lot to be excited about such that making a huge catcher investment would take priority of fixing a rotten bull pen that was reminiscent of the 2019 Mets bull pen. While the Mets seem to be focusing on James McCann, it seems reasonable to expect that Sandy Alderson and Cohen have his number easy to find.
1 comment:
No Trades! The Mets need surpluses to make any trades...and they don't have any surpluses...not at the ML level and CERTAINLY not at the AAA or AA level. I can't even find 5 starting pitchers for either SYR or BNG.
SA has so much as said the same thing.
Free agency is where they need to focus...at all 3 levels. "two kinds of currency in baseball, players and money, and what the Mets have is money." So forget Wheeler and while I would like JT, as much as to deprive the Phils, Nats and Skanks from having him as the fact that we need a catcher, they seem focused on James McCann and I can understand that approach as well.
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