Reese Kaplan -- Time for Steve Cohen to Open His Wallet

With the change in ownership from the Wilpons to Steve Cohen, the fans were anxious to see what behaviors and planning would now become a part of the franchise after too many years of scrap heap picking and living on the DFA wire for bolstering the roster.  Obviously the big splash trade to bring in Francisco Lindor and his subsequent top three in baseball contract for $341 million over ten years suggested that the pockets were not going to be padlocked shut.  

Now Lindor has taken awhile to heat up but recently has shown the fans what he is capable of doing beyond his electric smile and swift fielding.  He’s shown power and speed (though not enough of the latter).  It just seems as if he’s going through an adjustment to a whole new slate of pitchers he’s faced very little throughout his thus far eye popping offensive career.  Take a deep breath and be confident he will continue his improvement little by little every day.

This time, however, the Mets are in a very different situation where it comes to pitching.  Yes, I’ve outlined who is and is not available in the minors.  Since that article mere days ago Robert Gsellman and Jeurys Familia have both hit the IL with injuries.  Gsellman’s torn lat muscle is said to be an 8 week minimum off the active roster. 

Familia has a hip impingement which is one of those things that can be mere discomfort that requires rest for the minimum of ten days or something that will require more serious medical attention and require him to be written out of their plans for much longer.  Considering he was pitching mostly well for the Mets this season, his loss hurts a lot more than does Gsellman.  

The biggie, however, was the surprisingly effective Joey Lucchesi who also hit the skids this week.  He started off poorly but ran off a string of six good appearances in a row only to have some pain which they quickly scheduled for Tommy John Surgery.  He will be gone all of the rest of this year and likely most of or all of next year.  That one is going to hurt more than you would have thought back in Spring Training when a long term injury to Lucchesi would have warranted a number of people shrugging and saying, “Who?”

Of course, with Jacob deGrom also missing time more than once with issues related to discomfort, that leaves Marcus Stroman and Taijuan Walker as the remaining relatively healthy stalwarts to hold down five spots in the starting rotation.  (Well, you don't know yet how healthy Stroman is with his quick departure from Tuesday night's game with a hip issue!)

You do have David Peterson occupying another 20% of the planned starting five, but his last start notwithstanding he’s been fairly stomach churning during the 2021 season.  Thus far he’s 2-5 with a 5.31 ERA over 13 starts and racks up a negative WAR rating of -0.2.

That brings us back to the question of the Cohen-led Mets vs. the Wilpon buffoonery of years past.   In the Wilpon era the Mets would prematurely promote pitchers not yet ready for the majors to cripple their self confidence and lead to game losses.  The other option is they would find formally deemed useless pitchers from the DFA lists of other teams stashing them in AAA or promoting them directly to the Mets roster in the majors.  Both of these penurious approaches rarely paid positive dividends.

Now, to be fair, the Mets have made a couple of these types of moves already.  They promoted the ineffective Jerad Eickhoff from Syracuse and just sent former Blue Jays prospect Yennsy Diaz to the big club once again.  Eickhoff was surprisingly sharp in his four IP in which he gave up no runs, but it doesn’t mirror his 5.32 ERA against AAA hitters this full season. (He's also 1-1 as a pinch hitter.)  Diaz had a perfect ERA as well but has better pedigree out of the pen, notching a 3.48 ERA in Syracuse.  His issue has been control. Last night he gave up a couple of runs to bring him back down to earth. Then today they added 31 year old journeyman Robert Stock.  

As the Major League trade deadline approaches it is time for the Cohen-led Mets to reach deep down into his pockets to find some coin to pay for other clubs’ effective and healthy pitchers who will be dangled to teams in need of some fresh arms.  The first name that comes to mind is the surprisingly successful Kyle Gibson of the Rangers who this year changed the way in which he uses his breaking pitches.  His 5-0 record is accompanied by a 2.17 ERA and a nearly 3:1 strikeout to walk ratio.  However, if you examine his career numbers (including a long stint with Jeremy Hefner in Minnesota), he’s a .500 pitcher with a 4.41 ERA.  He’s making nearly $10 million this year and would cost $7.7 million in 2022.  He’d be a hold-down-the-fort type and would come with another year of contractual eligibility, but is that the best they can do?

Former Yankee Michael Pineda is having a fine year with the now Hefner-less Twins this season and is due to be a free agent at year’s end, so Minnesota may be inclined to move him for prospects as they have fallen out of pennant chasing stature.  Right now Pineda is on a $10 million deal with no return for 2022 unless for some reason they choose to extend him.  He’s a career 4.00 ERA pitcher, so that would make him somewhat better than Gibson. As a back-of-the-rotation starter, he wouldn’t be awful but not great either. 

 

There are countless other pitchers whose employers will ask for the sun, the moon and the stars to get them to switch uniforms.  There is one whose arm is head and shoulders above everyone on the Mets staff with the possible exception of Jacob deGrom.  The bottom feeding Washington Nationals have come to the end of their long contract with Max Scherzer who is earning $34.5 million this year and due to go to the highest bidder in 2022 when he enters his age 37 season.  He’s pitching to a 2.21 ERA which would be even more impressive if not for deGrom’s performance and has taken home 3 Cy Young Awards along with 7 straight All Star Game appearances from 2013 through 2019.  

Now here’s an expensive but highly effective way for Cohen to demonstrate to the rest of baseball that he’s serious about winning this year.  How would you like to have to face deGrom and Scherzer back-to-back in a series?  Throw in a healthy Taijuan Walker and Marcus Stroman and you have a top four that could live with a Peterson, Eickhoff or whomever for the 5th starting slot.  

To get Scherzer might not be quite as expensive as you might think.  He’s under no obligation to return to the team.  He costs a lot of money.  You only get him for less than half a season.  You’d have to give up some significant pieces from the farm system but it’s not quite the king’s ransom you’d think because who else out there has the budgetary flexibility to take him on for 15 starts?