Reese Kaplan -- Tick-Tock...Time's Slipping Away for Mets Inertia

Like sands through an hourglass so go the days of our Mets lives...

Earlier in this season people were on the “get ridda the bum!” bandwagon over various players.  Obviously Daniel Vogelbach was on that list.  So was Darin Ruf.  So was Tommy Pham.  

To a lesser extent people were griping about Mark Canha, Tomas Nido and the various retreads brought in for short stints to help aid when others got injured.  

Then there was the pitching crowd armed at the least with pitch forks and torches.  They were after David Peterson, Tylor Megill, Carlos Carrasco and nearly every relief pitcher.

Well, Bob Dylan may have been right...or wasn't he?

Now that Daniel Vogelbach has heated up, more and more folks are extending the fan olive branch to him.  Dead wrong.  Now is the time to see what you can get in return for him now that he has a baseball pulse once again.  Some folks say he is one of Pete Alonso’s big buddies.  Hey, Pete...the game is about winning, not about who you want to have over for burgers nad beers.

Similarly, folks are rethinking their initial hostility towards Tommy Pham.  Sorry, but if your team is so bad that a .255 hitter is cause for rejoicing then there are much deeper problems.  He’s on a one year deal and is already 35 years old.  No matter how nice a teammate he appears to be, he too should be on the trading block.

Mark Canha has been heating up a bit, too...good...get some team in desperate need of an outfielder with only the remainder of this year salary obligation ahead of him will think highly enough to sacrifice some AA or AAA players for him as the Angels did for Eduardo Escobar.

I’m not going to rehash the right thing to do with the starting pitching, but suffice to say the team drastically needs to restock AA and AAA with quality prospects.  Even if you wound up hanging onto the 2023 staff into 2024, you don’t currently have the support system in place in Syracuse nor Binghamton to make up for injuries and woeful performances.

One guy who has never really caught on with the fans in a big way is Carlos Carrasco.  Like the bigger names in front of him he’s only on the books for the remainder of this year.  A club suffering pitching problems might hand over some worthy minor leaguers if you agree Carrasco is not part of the 2024 future.  Why hang onto him?

I gave Billy Eppler feint praise for making the Escobar deal.  Stop sitting on your hands!  There are many others who similarly can be relocated to other teams as you actually try to build a foundation for the seasons yet to come.  

No one expects to bring in key cogs that will magically propel the Mets towards the top of the division, but a smart GM would be thinking past the October 1st season end and instead preparing for the long term.  Doing nothing is not a strategy for success.