Mr. and Mrs. Macks Mets Reader:
How would you finish off the sculpting of the 2022 masterpiece begun pre-lockout when the Cohen regime acquired the likes of Scherzer and Marte et al?
Only answer if you seriously want to build a true pennant contender. If all you intend to do is build a team capable of serious September baseball, you're being too "Wilpon".
OK - the ground rules have been laid out - your task (once again, now that the lock out has been knocked out) - your task lies before you - let's hear it.
OF COURSE...
The Mets made a big trade Saturday - whether you like it or not:
The Post reported: "In another “win now” move, the team acquired right-hander Chris Bassitt (12-4, 3.15 in 27 starts) from the Athletics for pitching prospects J.T. Ginn and Adam Oller, sources confirmed."
Whaddya think? Is it OK to win now?
Anyway, you can also address what you think the Mets' division opponents might have up their sleeves. After all, the Mets don't play in a vacuum.
LASTLY...
How about this for a Blue Jays home field advantage, if this policy does not change in the next 4 weeks?
Injuries aside, another concern for MLBPA: unvaccinated players.
Restrictions in Canada don’t allow unvaccinated players to enter the country. Hence, players who miss games in Toronto due to vaccination status will not be paid and would lose service time.
The team seems to be embracing using top picks as trade fodder. I can live with this Bassitt for Ginn and Oller trade, even though it leaves the Mets' rotation awfully old, but I hope none of the other top kids get traded. Part of the fun of the game is having kids come up and blossom.
ReplyDeleteLove the trade.
ReplyDeleteWe are.mow.a big market team and prospects will be pawns to be moved for seasoned vets.
Yes, we went from half-stepping big market team to bulldozing big market team. All it took was a checkbook and passion and willingness to go BIG.
ReplyDeleteOne thing my experience with Macks Mets has done over the last couple years is refocused my interest in the prospects. Because I have been paying more attention to the draft picks and the young guys coming up, I have gotten kind of attached to a few of them. Ginn was one of them. I am thinking this was an expensive trade for a 33 year old pitcher with free agency coming in one year.
ReplyDeleteI have written a couple articles on the imbalances within the organization and one of them that I identified was the lack of top pitching prospects. It is even thinner now.
The flip side is that the Mets have a lot of high draft picks in the upcoming draft - something like 6 of the top 100 and there are a lot of good arms ready for pro ball.
For sure, Chris Bassett looks like he can help the Mets in a big way in 2022 and if he does, hopefully they can sign him for a couple more years.
We needed someone like Bassitt to complete the rotation. Now we can play through injuries with guys like Megill and Peterson in long relief and as spot starters as they continue their development. We are very short on lefties right now, so if we're all in, then we should get someone like Hader. I hope he has some bullets left - Hader has thrown a lot of games in the last 4 years.
ReplyDeleteFrom Keith Law:
ReplyDelete“I thought the time of the Mets trading away recent draft picks before they even got their feet wet in pro ball might be over, but they’ve done it again, dealing right-hander J.T. Ginn, their second-round pick in 2020, after just a single season in the minors – his first year back from Tommy John surgery – to acquire right-hander Chris Bassitt from Oakland. Ginn was a different pitcher after he came back from the year off, moving away from a power approach with a plus-plus slider, becoming an extreme groundball guy with a strong changeup and better control than he’d shown prior to the injury. I wouldn’t be surprised to see another step forward from him in 2022, now that he’ll be another year removed from surgery. But even as he was last year, he projects as a mid-rotation starter who’ll be able to work deeper into games because he gets so many groundballs and can do so early in counts. There’s still some question about him holding up long-term, but I’d take six years of him for one year of Bassitt all day long.
The A’s also got Adam Oller, a 27-year-old journeyman whom the Mets got in the Rule 5 draft’s minor league phase in 2019. He’s improved his velocity later in his career, working with a 55 fastball with a ton of action and throwing enough strikes that he could be the A’s fifth starter right now. I don’t think there’s much of a ceiling here given his age, but the difference between Bassitt and whatever Oller and Ginn might produce in the majors in 2022 is probably less than three wins, maybe closer to two.
As for Bassitt, he’s become a much better pitcher over the last three years, but also got a big boost from pitching in Oakland’s forgiving home park – since the start of 2019, he’s given up 11 homers at home and 31 on the road. He succeeds despite a lack of plus velocity or movement on his fastball or any sort of plus secondary pitch by mixing six different pitches, right down to a very slow curveball, getting weak contact on his ordinary four-seamer mostly through deception and tunneling. He drops down on the four-seamer for an unusually low release point, similar to that of all of his pitches except for the curveball, which he probably doesn’t need anyway. There’s no real upside here – the hope is he repeats his 3.3 fWAR/3.9 rWAR season, but I think there’s some likely regression as he leaves a friendlier ballpark, and because he lives in the middle of the strike zone so much. I’d forecast something around 2.5 WAR, and for just one year, Ginn alone seems like a lot to give up, even with his durability question.”
I agree with Keith. I would have liked a free agent instead.
Gus, if there was another way to get there, I keep Ginn and Oller, too. What if Ginn turns into a 15 game winner? I personally think Ginn could be ready later this season, even though he was only in High A last season.
ReplyDeleteOller I agree in 2022 could be similar to what we got from Megill last year.
From that perspective, Bassitt - and the rest of the rotation - better hold up.
I also agree with Keith, but I would have been OK with Mauricio or Vientos instead of Ginn, although I really don't like a top 10 prospect for a one year player.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is, Steve Cohen will make moves to win now, and keep winning. If moves fail, he will spend more to fix it. Unlimited wallet.
ReplyDelete