Reese Kaplan -- Put Down Your Torches Over Roster Decisions

Roster decisions are not necessarily a popularity contest.  

If a well known player with a stellar reputation spends Spring Training struggling against the preseason opponents, neither hitting the ball effectively if a batter nor throwing pitches with authority if a pitcher, it’s really not the end of the world.  After all, the rites of Spring have more to do with getting into game shape for the upcoming season and helping fellow ballplayers as well as the coaching staff see things that may need to be addressed to break out of the short term slump.

To many fans the preseason is a make-or-break contest on both sides of the equation.  For the players hoping to hook into a role on the major league roster it is a sprint to the finish to play above and beyond what could be reasonably expected.  If you are a fringe AAAA type of player who has dabbled in the majors but never established yourself as a surefire big leaguer, this type of performance is often the only avenue available to make it to the top short of regular players suffering injuries and reinforcements needed from the minors.  

No one can forget Mets players in the past who flew north with the club despite not having much pedigree in what had been done in the past.

The second group of prospective players are the youngsters who have torn it up in the minor league ascension and who feel that their time is now.  

To be fair, everyone has gone through hot streaks of a week to a month that is not really sustainable over the long term, but to fans and many writers when a guy hits well over .300 for the entire spring they begin the vociferous and often raucous demand that it has become time for this would be major leaguer finally to get his chance.  Many would have put Brett Baty into this category and perhaps Mark Vientos as well.

Then there is the third type of player in Port St. Lucie who has been a bonafide major leaguer for a number of years but simply isn’t producing as well as in the past.  We’re not talking about a minor slump of a month or so, but giving forth entire seasons of borderline performance.  These folks have the ace in the hole which used to be known as the back of the baseball card before statistical analytics opened up whole new evaluations of player performance metrics.  

This type of player having a substandard preseason you would think would find himself skating on thin ice but front offices who made the decision to bring in the player in the first place feel a need to justify that decision while field managers and coaches remember well what that player has been capable of doing and expect a known commodity is a better bet than an unknown one. 

Finally there are the players whose Spring metrics are off kilter due to recover from injury.  That broad stroke could mean an inability to grip a bat properly, run at full speed, throw without compromising various muscles in the totality of the arm movement or cover the ground necessary to field like a professional.  These cases are very much one-by-one in nature.  

If Starling Marte doesn’t look like an All Star due to injury recovery, no one is panicking.  However, when a borderline player also is facing injury woes, it is extremely understandable and reasonable for the casual fan (or baseball writer) to question openly the appropriateness of simply handing over a precious roster spot to someone whose contributions are almost nil.

This whole diatribe has a lot to do with the Billy Eppler decision to send not just Francisco Alvarez and Ronny Mauricio to Syracuse.  Those moves were almost expected given the minimal exposure and in-game gaps Alvarez has shown while Mauricio has yet to ascend to that level. 

However, it is much more questionable to see the club’s hottest hitting infielder and potential right handed DH farmed out ostensibly so that they could play every day to refine defense and continue working on offense while being in the lineup day after day as opposed to sitting on the bench in the majors and never playing often enough to get into a groove.  The logic is fairly sound, but try telling that to Baty and Vientos.

While everyone is hopeful and expecting both Marte and Brando Nimmo to heal properly and perform at an optimal level, there is someone straddling the fence between wasted veteran and injury rehabber in one Darin Ruf.  

In his best years he was overall a mediocre performer but had shown his platoon numbers being far more impressive on a steady diet of southpaws than he was facing righthanders.  We all know excruciatingly well how horrible he was in 2022 and his preseason was delayed by arthritic pain in his wrist.  He hasn’t done much of anything to show he’s going to be a solid contributor in 2023.  

Consequently people wonder if Steve Cohen can swallow the mega contract of Robinson Cano, why is the relatively puny $3 million cementing his status as the right handed half of the DH position?

It’s a long season and many things can happen.  Injuries and slumps both occur and no one sincerely expects both Baty and Vientos to reside in Syracuse until September.  However, you do need to wonder how it feels to perform at a solid level throughout the Spring only to be pushed out the door?  

Granted, Eduardo Escobar almost carried the club singlehandedly with his bat in September when the pitchers were struggling and Starling Marte was unavailable, but many wonder if maybe a combo of Baty at 3B and Esocbar in the DH slot would have been a better approach than the second half aggregate DH that didn’t perform as expected.