Remember's Ramblings: October 4, 2021

 

Remember's Ramblings:   Thoughts from early October 2021   

  

As I roll over another year of my life this week, I, like all of us are, am disappointed again in the results of the now ended Mets season.   I am also just returning to work for my prior employer who laid me off two years ago but came back begging this summer.   I will never understand corporate America.   Got funding for jobs, don't got funding, and the cycle goes on.   So for better or worse, my retirement will have to take a break for a bit - there is a special project that is supposed to wrap up in January 2023, so I'm thinking a year and half will do it.    Next summer will be hard - kinda got used to my time off after two summers.   I suspect my golf game will continue to flounder. 

Now for the Mets.     This offseason is setting up to be an interesting one.   After not renewing the contract of the Manager, there is no org structure between the players and whatever Sandy's title is.  That needs to change.

As far as the player changes go, there has been, and will continue to be a lot of chatter about what should be done.   If only we could all be the GM by committee, although I'm not sure we'd all agree enough to get anything really done.

My take at this point is to shoot for 2023.    Let 2022 happen and make the best of it.    My thoughts:

Mike's Mets covered this pretty well in his last post, but the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, CBA for short, expires on Dec 01, 2021.    After watching the owners and players negotiating how to handle the pandemic season of 2020, it is hard to imagine that there will be a smooth process to sign a new one.   As Mike points out, this could be a fairly lengthy process which could drive a lockout and cancel games in 2022. 

My take from this is:   don't make any trades for one year players, particularly if the return has to be prospects.    In my thoughts on how to rebuild for 2022, I have proposed trades for the likes of Byron Buxton and Mitch Haniger.    They would need to be 'salary dump' trades from the Twins or Mariners, because it would really hurt to give up top prospects for players that may not even play a full year.     The same can be said for Free Agent signings.   

While I am in the camp that there definitely needs to be Qualifying Offers out to both Michael Conforto and Noah Syndergaard and would certainly risk paying each of them $20M for the year, they cannot simply let either of them walk without compensation.

That brings me back to maybe 2023 and not 2022 is the year to shoot for.   IF both Conforto and Syndergaard should decline the Q.O. and move on, they would be entitled to compensatory draft picks (making an assumption that that piece of the CBA will remain in place for another year) and with their Rocker re-do pick at 11 and their miserable season finish pick at 14, they would then have 4 of the first 40 or so picks.   That is a pretty good talent haul and can really beef up the system.     I would encourage them to not throw away any of those picks by signing anyone from a different organization that might have the Q.O. attached in their quest to spend money to improve.   This year is not the year to do so.  If one of their two own free agents does come back with the Q.O., fine, but don't go out of the way to sweep their draft advantage away. 

Lastly, much of their 'major league ready' core players that could be used as trade chips are coming off down years.   Guys like Dom Smith, Jeff McNeil, J.D. Davis and James McCann, have shown they are good MLB hitters.   I cannot guess what went wrong through the whole lineup this year, but trading any of them would be trading low.   Let's keep the band together (except for Conforto, probably) for another year and see if a possible different hitting approach will bring them all back to what we anticipated at the beginning of 2021. 

When (if) 2022 gets going and they are in the "same 'ol" funk, then address it at the trade deadline and build even more for 2023.    By then their farm should be starting to reap its rewards as well. 

Who knows, perhaps 2021 was just a pandemic hangover for this team, and as one commenter pointed out, the Giants, with just a few tweaks went from losing teams in 2019 and 2020 to 107 wins this year.  Why not try with the crew that we were all so optimistic with just 6 months ago?    Build for the long term with an extensive draft and play for the short term with players that have done it in the past.