Reese Kaplan -- Don't Let Salary Dictate Your Roster Construction

Let's have a little exercise in the economics of building a roster. Back in the Wilpon days we were fully aware that he who made the most played the most. It made no sense then and continue to make no sense now.

They were not new at that perspective of salary trumping all other attributes. No one can forget the Payson/de Roulet teams who attempted to control all players through limiting salary and rebuffing demands for more. Weren't Pat Zachry, Doug Flynn, Steve Henderson and Dan Norman worth a whole passel full of Tom Seavers? Of course not.

Now that we have the seemingly free spending ways of Steve Cohen many fans are still seemingly mired in the ways of the past and ready to accept the old, "He who makes the most gold wins" way of doing things. They fell a veteran presence and accumulated major league experience outweighs any recent bad season (or multiple seasons) in order to justify the front office's decisions made to bring on the player in the first place.

There is a polar opposite perspective that is equally invalid that money is an unlimited resource and if a guy has a bad game or two that slumps are unfixable and you simply offer up a DFA pink slip to rid yourselves of the player's now apparently incurable productivity and you just reach into your pocket and buy a solution. Does anyone remember cutting ties with borderline Hall of Fame candidate Jeff Kent?

So if the truth lies somewhere between these extremes, how do the Mets approach roster construction when it comes to infield, outfield and designated hitter?

The first camp is obviously on board with having retained lefty swinging big man Daniel Vogelbach, newly signed free agent Tommy Pham and even veteran hitter Darin Ruf. To do so costs $1.5 million, $6 million and $3 million respectively.

The second camp feels that a whopping total of $10.5 million is mere pocket change as evidenced by the termination of the much more expensive Robinson Cano contract when it was clear that the combination of age and a clean blood chemistry rendered him useless. That "proof" justifies that money is not important and although the Mets did not land any of the higher profile DH candidates available this offseason, it's clearly prudent to keep this trio on the shortest of leashes.

The truth campers would quickly point out that platooning against right handed pitching is playing to Vogelbach's strength, and his recent weight loss helps justify a fresh commitment to success in baseball at a paltry salary for someone with his kind of home run power and OPS. 

 They will point to Pham's decent if unspectacular stat sheet that shows multiple seasons over 20 HRs and over 20 SBs, but at this point in his career he would be a higher quality player coming off the bench to rest a starter or fill in for an IL stint by someone else than would be the likes of Tyler Naquin, Travis Jankowski, Nick Plummer, Ender Inciarte or Terrance Gore.

One name in which all three camps would readily agree, however, was ending the horrific trade made by Billy Eppler to bring career .239 hitting Darin Ruf to complement the competent job being done by Vogelbach at DH. He cost some pretty decent personnel to bring in a guy whose 2022 as a Met ended with zero home runs, 7 RBIs and a .152 batting average. Numbers like that may drive a man to drink something far stronger than an antacid.

Then, to make matters worse, Ruf came into camp with severe enough pain that he hasn't even yet made an appearance in the lineup. So you have a guy who cost you baseball talent to acquire, he performed at a level not seen before in a Mets uniform, yet as the season is threatening to begin in April he's already nominated to be the right handed half of the DH platoon.

At the same time this obviously inscrutable fascination with justifying the bad thinking that brought him here confounds all of us, the team has hot hitting rookies in Francisco Alvarez, Brett Baty, Ronny Mauricio and Mark Vientos.

Now everyone understands that Alvarez needs to play behind the dish every day in AAA to improve the defensive side of his game. That's a given.

Brett Baty is likely the third baseman of the future for the club when Eduardo Escobar's contract ends in 2023 and he needs more defensive innings at the hot corner while also gaining more swings of the bat against AAA pitching which he saw in a 2022 split between AA and AAA. There's also the story he might be shifted to the outfield where the club will have a hole in the near future.

Then there's the offseason hitting machine in Ronny Mauricio whose rise to the majors is blocked by Francisco Lindor. That means in the future he's moving positions to third base (to fight off Baty), second base (to fight off Jeff McNeil) or also to test out how it is to be an outfielder. His future for 2023 is AAA which he's never before faced and needs another year of development as he refines his game.

So Darin Ruf is it until you come to think about the 4th horseman named Mark Vientos. Unlike these first three candidates, he's had a full season plus in AAA already. In one game this past weekend he slugged two bonafide home runs one of which was listed as an over 430 foot shot. 

Everyone acknowledges that his glove is even worse than Baty's but as a backup to Pete Alonso at first base or a crash course in learning the outfield he might make it as a bench player.

Or...maybe, just maybe, the Mets could do the seemingly unthinkable and open up the right handed half of the DH position for a salivating youngster who has shown the ability to hit for power at every level after adjusting to increased pitching levels and making that minimum wage employee worth far more to the team than the $3 million that will be paid to Mr. .152.

If he cannot do the job, there's Tommy Pham. If he can, well, wouldn't that revive fans' perspective about Billy Eppler's decision making instead of banking on the faulty hands of the bat being held by Darin Ruf?