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7/29/24

Reese Kaplan -- Time Is Not On the Mets' Side


Gather a group into a room who are concerned about the New York Mets in the present and in the future after a fairly recently stomach turning past that lingered over into the beginning of 2024.  Get the owner, Steve Cohen, the POBO, David Stearns, an assortment of your favorite media scribes and a large contingent of excited, frustrated and disagreeable Mets fans.  Let them see what’s before them as the Tuesday trade deadline looms very near with not much time to do anything else. 

First, what has been done?  Well, the planned additions of veteran relievers Phil Maton and Ryne Stanek may not be the real headline generating mega moves people hoped to see happen, but every person in that room would acknowledge that improvement in the bullpen was priority number one. 


Now many in this assembled motley crew of Mets opinion holders would advocate that the club needs to be bolder and bring in much more impactful players with All Star pedigrees to keep the club’s recent good fortunes rolling and to bolster the team’s hold on an October baseball position.  Word then came down that Jesse Winker was coming to the Mets.  Well, he did once make an All Star team but this past season settled for a rather minor contract with the Nationals.  Still, it’s a step in the right direction.

For a moment let’s think back to the summer of 2015 when the Mets made several late July roster transactions.  They saw that John Mayberry was not what they had hoped and cut him loose, replacing him with a AA outfielder by the named of Michael Conforto.  They knew their bench was not getting it done and added veteran role players Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe.  Injuries continued to make a big impact on the club with countless folks missing a lot of time due to medical issues, including David Wright, Jerry Blevins, Travis d’Arnaud, Michael Cuddyer and others. 

So the question facing the club right now is whether or not the combination of Maton and Stanek add up to the value of Tyler Clippard and if these types of incremental improvements are all that is necessary?

Well, back in 2015 they thought they needed a middle of the order bat to push the team to the postseason.  Then they brought in a supplement to the relief corps in Tyler Clippard.  Of course, at the eleventh hour having passed on the medically fragile Carlos Gomez, they then added Yoenis Cespedes by giving up future rookie of the year Michael Fulmer and Luis Cessa.

So it seemed back then to improve a club you needed to reinforce what was working in small ways, fill the gap in the bullpen in a big way and then make a World Series level transaction bringing in the bat that carried the team into October. 

Earlier in the year it appeared as if the Mets would be holding a house cleaning sale in July as nothing was going right.  It was time to dump the expiring contracts and free-agents-to-be in order to fortify the minors as they did in 2023.  Things changed and moved the club from sellers to buyers.  How much are they willing to buy?  Remember the payroll tax factor in adding salary so despite Cohen’s coffers it may not be quite as simple as taking on some other team’s $25 million player salary. 


Everyone applauds the small changes that have been made, but with the IL holding the likes of Starling Marte, Kodai Senga, Christian Scott, Drew Smith, Reed Garrett, Sean Reid-Foley and others, many are wondering if they haven’t yet done quite enough.  There’s still time until the end of the day...

8 comments:

  1. Reese, Stearns has made a blurring amount of trades and player personnel moves. Hard to believe he wont have something big to come. I am all in on whatever he does, short of Brandon Sproat being dealt.

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  2. He added Stanek, Maton and Winker...complementary pieces but not critical ones.

    I'm awaiting a starting pitcher now that we're down Scott, Senga and saddled with Megill (hopefully just a short term AAAA type of appearance).

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  3. It is amazing to see how expectations change so dramatically in such a short period. It was just weeks ago that we expected selling, then we thought maybe a few small pieces, and now I think the fan base is looking for a big "Cespedes" moment.

    Personally, I think that Stearns stays the course and makes the minor adjustments to keep the club on the "competitive" track towards a bigger prize in 2025.

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  4. I will cover my take on Winker and Stanek at 11:00 AM.

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    1. I'm looking forward to that. One thing is certain-- they couldn't have gotten off to worse starts.

      Nowhere to go but up. Right?

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  5. The Mets should not mortgage the future on a WC hunt. Yes, its been fun but now it seems the Mets could go into a tailspin like the Yankees did.

    Go with what you have, hold on the best way possible and wait for Marte, Bader and BP arms to get healthy.

    Right now, McNeil should stay in RF and OMG at 2B. The upgrades needed by the Mets are already inhouse. They just have to wait for them to get healthy.

    If they start trading the blue chip prospects, it will take years to recover. Stick with the plan.

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  6. I loved 15' well almost all of it but they had Colon DeGrom Harvey and Noah and that made a HUGE DIFFERENCE sadly were not there so please don't mortgage the future David.

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  7. Don't abandon the plan, but be realistic to how good your "top prospects" are. By which I mean, if the brain trust thinks some top prospects will ceiling out as "at best average" major leaguers, I do not have an issue with dealing those while their values are perhaps inflated right now.

    Many of us, a year or two ago, thought Hamel, Vasil and Ramirez were future stars. Know what you got, don't be afraid to trade off the overinflated or future mediocre. Keep, though pitchers, since they are more brittle than ever before.

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