Reese Kaplan -- 2nd Half: Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way!

The All Star break is behind us and perhaps Tom Brennan summed it up best when he volunteered that the first 5-7 games taking place as part two of the season begins should determine the buy/sell/inertia decisions to be made regarding the roster.  That's probably a sensible approach that should satisfy the optimists, pessimists and Billy Eppler who seems to excel at the inertia approach.  

Every day it seems I go through the same debate with folks with no one willing to give an inch in their point of view.  I'm just as guilty myself.

The optimists feel that being 6.5 games out of the wildcard round of the playoffs is not insurmountable.  Given that there are more than two full months of the season left to play, there's some merit to that argument. So many people have slumped through the first half that a revival by Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, Adam Ottavino, Carlos Carrasco, Pete Alonso, Francisco Lindor, Starling Marte and continued improvements by Francisco Alvarez and Brett Baty, then erasing that deficit in the standings is indeed possible.  Of course, accompanying this rescusitation of pitching and offense would also require ongoing solid performances from Kodai Senga, David Robertson, Brooks Raley and Tommy Pham.

The pessimists look at the number of required improvements and feel that probability is not on the team's side and as a result a big selloff is in order.  Needless to say Tommy Pham would be an easy trade to make as his revival and modest pay would make him attractive to nearly every other team looking for an extra bat.  You won't get a king's ransom in return, but getting something is better than nothing which is the result at year's end when Pham becomes a free agent once again.  

The major returns are the ones concerning the top two starting pitchers and the closer.  It would take pretty much an 0-7 next week of baseball to make the Mets even consider going in this direction.  The fact is that the returns for this trio should be considerable and given the dearth of pitching in the upper minors it would seem that finding rock solid AA and AAA arms would most definitely be available as well as up to $90 million of salary relief to set up for 2024.  

Earlier I made mention of the do-nothing attitude of the Mets GM, Billy Eppler.  During the offseason with Steve Cohen's deep pockets he's certainly active, but during the season he is seemingly frozen in place, making no moves to improve the fate of the ballclub.  Part of it may be pride at having selected players who are not performing as projected.  Part of it could be innate fear of another 2022 lopsided selloff to get mediocre players who did nothing to help the fight for a pennant.  Maybe when free agency is off the table in mid year he's simply not capable of putting together significant trades that are good for both sides.  Both the optimists and pessimists are frustrated by the front office inertia when changes most definitely need to be made, either on the buying or selling side.

Obviously everyone wants to see the Mets succeed and in a perfect world it would be the Braves, Phillies and others looking up at us at the top of the division.  Since reality is sometimes a harsh taskmaster, it's going to take some hard and deep thinking about whether adding pieces to occupy Citifield in 2023 or filling the minors in preparation for the future is the better approach.  The one thing everyone will agree upon, however, that doing nothing is not acceptable anymore.