Steve Cohen's Mets are making "baseball decisions" these days, proving that the Wilpon era is mercifully behind us.
I have to admit that I didn't see this coming. Before Sunday night's game, I thought a demotion to Syracuse for Dominic Smith was the most likely scenario. However, it's mighty tough to demote a guy after a 4 for 4. After Dom's big night, I thought it would be Travis Jankowski receiving the pink slip. Jankowski may be a useful player, but he's the last guy off the bench for the 2022 Mets. It sure would have cost the Mets a lot less to release Jankowski. Instead, Steve Cohen instructed Billy Eppler to "make the baseball decision." With those powerful words, Robinson Canó's Mets career came to an inglorious conclusion, and I found myself falling in love all over again.
I don't have anything personal against Robinson Canó, other than the general uneasiness of having a guy on your team who has been caught cheating twice. Canó has fit in well on this team when he's been here. He's not a narcissist in the mold of Alex Rodriguez, his fellow twice-caught steroid cheat. Nor was it Canó who decided to take on 5 years and $100 million left on Canó's contract — after the then 36-year-old had been caught taking a masking agent for PEDs and was suspended for half a season.
I don't even blame former in-over-his-head GM Brodie Van Wagenen for making the move. I blame the baseball people in the room with Van Wagenen, who failed to talk him out of the deal. I particularly blame the two guys named Wilpon, who presumably should have seen enough over decades of owning the team to know that bringing Canó to the Mets was quite unlikely to have a happy ending.
None of that matters much anymore. As wealthy as the man certainly is, it still couldn't have felt good to Steve Cohen to fling almost $40 million into the ether. I'm sure that Eppler and Buck Showalter didn't enjoy telling a guy who was once ticketed to Cooperstown that they would rather keep Jankowski on the bench.
Travis Jankowski has been a useful contributor to the 2022 Mets, but no one is deluding themselves into believing that Travis will maintain that gaudy +.300 batting average all year. Jankowski has a lifetime .241/.323/.318 slash line over 8 MLB seasons, good for an OPS+ of 78, far below MLB average. Albert Almora has slightly higher lifetime numbers, and he couldn't even get a major league job this season. But Jankowski has fit in very well to his role as the last man off the bench for the Mets.
2 comments:
One thing that often gets forgotten is salaries on long term contracts like his are typically straight line, but if teams were honest, matching salary to value, Cano should (assuming 10 years, $200 million for ease of math) have started at $30 million and dropped $2 million a year to $10 million. So his last 2 years really s/h/b $22 million total.
The same thing will happen with Lindor in the last 2 years of his 10 year deal - if he makes it that far.
I had read that Jeff had heard that the Phillies were interested in Diaz, and he pushed Brodie into making the deal.
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