Look, c'mon, man, over time, every team will screw up on player decisions.
For instance, Luke Voit, for Gallegos and Shreve?
Well, the Cardinals did get a couple of strong relievers.
But Voit in 774 ABs as a Yankee has had 57 HRs and 147 RBIs.
Yanks won that one. But Voit was a not-yet totally proven commodity.
The deal going in made real sense.
On the other hand...
You want to avoid avoidable disastrous decisions, that looked disastrous (at least to me) at the time.
Four avoidable disastrous decisions for the Mets have changed the course of the franchise over the past 10 years:
1. JUSTIN TURNER
Justin Turner was a competent hitter while with the Mets. They non-tendered him after 2013.
At the same time, injured David Wright had a nice season - except for missing 50 games.
The Mets should have been sufficiently concerned about Wright's health to not shed a viable 3B.
Wright after 2013 was clearly all downhill.
But shed they did - Turner was let go. Dumped. "When is trash pick-up?", I could swear I heard Jeff Wilpon say. Maybe Jeff got dumped by a red head once and hated red heads ever since. I dunno.
With the Dodgers since then, Turner has hit .302/.382/.503 in 2,680 at bats.
And against mostly strong Mets pitching since 2014, he is career .288 with a .576 slug %. Ouch.
"
In the post-season, virtually identical stats to his LAD career stats in over 300 plate appearances.
In other words, great hitting in the playoffs against great pitching.
Priceless.
In other words, the PERFECT Wright complementary fill in, and possible long term replacement.
Avoidable loss? absolutely.
Was it clear he would become just about as good a hitter as David Wright in his prime? No. But it was clear he was a good hitter. At a time when the Mets were trotting out the likes of Matt den Dekker and Colin Cowgill and other hitters who couldn't really hit.
And Turner was a fun personality. Unless you hate red heads.
And cheap. In 2014, post-Mets, he made a mere $1 million.
In 2015 and 2016, he made a total of less than $8 million.
He was cheap, he was controlled - yet the Mets non-tendered him.
Baffling. Big, avoidable blunder. Franchise-altering blunder.
Lastly, he is more than just numbers, more than just clutch. This is what a teammate just had to say in a NY Post article about Turner:
“He’s the heart and soul of this team,” Dodgers catcher Austin Barnes said of Turner. “J.T. is a big player for us, a great guy in the clubhouse. We rely on him all the time.”
2. DANIEL MURPHY
Daniel was a well-liked player before his 2015 super-surge, just prior to his free agency.
After his surge, the Mets' fans' love for Murphy had skyrocketed to BELOVED. Ask almost any Mets fan then, and they'd tell you: "Gotta keep him!"
He hit for average before his renaissance, and now hit better and with much more power, too.
Daniel, with varying degrees of competence, could play 2B, 1B, 3B, and LF. Not a Gold Glove, but clearly position-versatile.
His super-surge against baseball's best pitchers should have made keeping him a top priority.
And...Players who can crush it in the playoffs are PURE GOLD.
David Wright was damaged goods, although he played well when healthy in 2015. A 3B replacement clearly might be needed - and needed soon.
And Murphy's asking price was far from exorbitant.
The Mets could have kept him and traded underperforming Lucas Duda, let Daniel start 2016 at 1B, and have a net increment in salary, without Duda, of only about $7 million a year.
Duda was a zero charisma player who always seemed to frustrate. I have yet to hear a fan say, "I want to go to the park to watch Duda play - he is sheer excitement."
And there was danger: Murphy could go to the Mets' arch rivals, the Nats.
They failed to strategically sign Murphy. A Nat he became.
So, we all know what the Mets did - they let Murphy go, no doubt lusting over the compensation draft pick they'd get. Which turned out to be Anthony Kay, who has yet to prove he'll be as good as the not-very-good Steve Matz.
Murphy meanwhile averaged 143 games in his first two seasons with the Nats and averaged 45 doubles, 24 HRs, 99 RBIs, and .335. Insanely good. And he KILLED the Mets.
Murphy in 2016 and 2017 against Mets pitchers? 54 for 140 (.386 ain't bad, Ty Cobb just reminded me), with 24 extra base hits, 35 RBIs.
The Mets of course lost the Division to the Nats in 2016 and 2017.
Huge, huge blunder. Franchise-killing blunder.
Avoidable? Completely.
3. TRAVIS D'ARNAUD
Key player in the Mets' trading away a Cy Young award winner.
Boy, did he get injured a lot as a Met. Always seemed to be hurt.
But, despite the injuries that adversely impact a player's hitting effectiveness, he had accumulated 47 HRs and 164 RBIs in 1,360 Mets at bats - not bad at all for a catcher.
His throwing was bad, for sure. But he needed Tommy John Surgery, so how much of his poor throwing was due to a bum elbow kept quiet that finally failed? You don't want to advertise your catcher has a bum elbow, right? Who knows? My guess? His elbow had a lot to do with his poor pre-TJS throwing.
So, we all know the tale. He comes back from TJS, they send him down for rehab games in spring 2019, barely, rush him up rusty, he goes 2 for 23, they summarily jettison him.
After all, they had the mighty Tomas Nido and Rene Rivera to back up Wilson Ramos, what incredible (non) depth behind the Buffalo. I ask you:
WHAT...WAS...THE...RUSH? I sure wondered that at the time.
I asked then, with such weak back up catchers, why bum-rush d'Arnaud out the door?
Since he left the Mets, Travis had 493 regular season ABs, 24 doubles, 25 HRs, and 101 RBIs.
And was an impact hitter this post-season.
Best hitting catcher in baseball. Let that sink in.
Instrumental in his teams getting to the playoffs in 2019 and 2020.
While, if you missed it, the Mets missed the playoffs in 2019 and 2020.
Doing it for the Braves in 2020, their current arch-rival.
Must be part of their Help-My-Archrival initiative.
Meanwhile, the Mets are essentially catcher-less, at least that is how I saw 2020.
Huge, huge blunder. Franchise-killing blunder in 2019 and 2020. Only if the Mets get Realmuto (or perhaps McCann) in 2021 will the damage be stopped.
Avoidable? Completely.
4. HANSEL ROBLES
Robles was sent packing after a bad stretch in 2018.
But even with that bad stretch, Robles was 19-14, 4.07 as a Met in his career.
In 2018, the Mets had a bad bullpen, but for some reason the Mets braintrust felt that dumping a high 90s pitcher with moderate success made sense since they had guys like Paul Sewald and Tyler Bashlor.
Wait, what was Sewald and Bashlor's combined W/L record as Mets? Not 19-14 like Robles. Try 1-21 instead.
Some will say he needed a change of scenery - I say again:
WHAT...WAS...THE...RUSH?
In 2019, the same year that d'Arnaud was jettisoned, only to perform like a star for the Rays, Robles was 5-1, 2.48 with 23 saves, in a year where the Mets' bullpen was awful and the Mets barely missed the playoffs.
Huge, huge blunder. Franchise-damaging blunder.
Avoidable? Completely.
CONCLUSION:
When you look at all the talent the Mets have had in past decade, and only have a lucky-to-rebound-and-get-in 2015 playoff appearance and a one game wild card in 2016, you look at these 4 ENORMOUS, AVOIDABLE BLUNDERS and realize one thing:
If not for just these 4 beyond-dumb moves, it could have been a terrific decade of Mets baseball.
Instead it was Wilpons baseball. Which hopefully comes to an end today.
8 comments:
I'll let others quibble with the validity/fairness of those four examples, but I will say that a GM cannot live in mortal fear of making this kind of mistake. Otherwise, you become frozen in place, afraid to transact, stuck in mediocrity.
Look at this Mets roster. It is reasonable -- we've all read different versions of this -- for the Mets to consider trading Rosario, Nimmo, Davis. Maybe Smith or Alonso!
Any one of those guys could easily go on to become an All-Star, or at least a productive everyday player for a quality team. So what do you do? Keep the status quo?
A good front office, with good scouts and good analytics, makes the best assessments it can and acts accordingly. And sometimes you move a guy to get a guy. And sometimes you are terribly, horribly wrong.
For me, I think Nimmo is a guy who could easily become a quality LF for a team like, say, the Giants. Just getting on base all the time, one of the best table-setters in the game. I'm keeping him.
But ultimately, you can't stand pat. You can't become frozen in fear of making a mistake.
Roll those dice, baby.
Jimmy
Jimmy, two arguments.
1) Nimmo could go, and the risk is he could get better. But the Mets now have LH OF SURPLUS.
2) My article focuses on low cost guys we let go when we were in a position of talent deficit. Knee jerk moves when you have such a talent deficit in the area you are dumping from is not smart.
One example which I did not include was Marco Scutaro. .216 in his brief Mets career, .280 afterwards in his lenghty non-Mets tenure.
But they had surplus in the infield then, and perhaps insufficient impetus to dump an aging Joe McEwing going into the 2004 season and keeping Scutaro. Tough, tough call.
Houston dumping JD Davis was another - they had real surplus. Some potential in what they got back, but perhaps not nearly what the Mets got out of it.
I think the four I cited were easy calls - retain, not discard. Calls with huge consequences.
This topic is always an interesting discussion with quite a few different facets.
I certainly agree with Jimmy - you cannot be afraid to do your job to improve the team.
With that being said, I would like to see more trade activity with players like these. It doesn't seem to make much sense to just drop a guy (Turner, d'Arnaud) that is still a viable MLB player before his contract is up. There should be a team out there that will take a flyer on 'he just needs a new start'.
Now, with THAT being said, one of the issues I have with BVW is the trading of players to get filler pieces - losing Humphreys for Hamilton seems short-sighted. Replacement level players like that are readily available on minor league deals. I liked Marisnick as the 4th or 5th outfielder, but did he need to give up two players to get him.
As far as free agency goes, that is something a bit different. In hindsight, Murphy proved to be a mistake to not attempt to sign. He had a massive 2015 post season, but did anyone really believe he would hit that way for two full years? I did not. Wheeler is another one where the jury is still out. I agree with BVW that at the time, the contract he signed with Philly was too much and you need to let him go. Could he have gotten something better by trading him at the deadline? Who knows. Will Isaiah Greene, the compensation draft pick, become a star (or even reach the bigs)? Who knows. It is a crap shoot, but GMs cannot be afraid to do what they feel is right at the time.
One other point that I never see is that we, as fans, do not know the 'rest of the story'. All these players are human beings and there may be things about them that are known to the club but not the fans. Was d'Arnaud 'done with' New York?
Finally, with respect to the 2020-21 offseason, one of the other Mets blog sites has posted an article on possible non-tender candidates, specifically Heredia, Gsellman, and Matz. Is there any value in any of these players? Is there the possiblity that any of them will be then next Turner or Robles? I think Gsellman and Matz have value and should definitely be tendered contracts. Trade them later if you don't want to keep them but neither is breaking the bank at this point.
I can squint to see three of these examples, but I can’t for Robles. I recall after one of rockets Robles allowed, hearing Howie Rose say “He has the appropriate initials”. To which Josh Lewin agreed. The difference with Robles is his pitching repertoire changed in Anaheim. In NY it was hard and harder because he threw 97. In Anaheim, they emphasized he off speed pitch more. He went from throwing it 10% of the time here to 24% there. Hitters were kept honest. That’s a big deal.
Turner was let go for “being lazy”. We still ha ent found out what that was all about. As for TDA, we don’t have an answer as to why he was released after 35 at bats, but the Dodgers released him after just 1. Where is that in the writeup? In an article in The Athletic, d’Arnaud credits his resurgence to going to Tampa because his ex-hitting coach I. The Blue Jays system was the hitting coach of the Rays. That guy got TDA to be doing the things he did as a Blue Jays prospect and that is what turned TDA around. That wasn’t going to happen in NYC, unless they hired that hitting instructor.
Murphy was a “net negative” by Gary Cohen and the Mets were frustrated at seeing his trying to steal third with two outs, or having the ball roll under his glove. You take the good with the bad. He did these things with the Nats too, but they didn’t have a cow about it.
Tom we may have LH surplus but not OF surplus...
if conforto get hurt or the new CF or both who fills in?
JD ? DOM? Mcneil?
No Nimmo should remain and be in the mix for the top 4 OF on the 2020 team
I have always been a huge Travis d'Arnaud fan, but I don't blame the Mets for releasing him.
Please recall the circumstances.
This was a player with a brutal injury history. His 2018 season basically never happened because he had Tommy John surgery.
Nonetheless, Brodie made the decision in 2019 to keep him on the roster. There was a one million dollar payout he had to make toward the end of Spring Training (or else keep the money and cut him).
Travis was out of options. He was either going to be on the ML team or released.
As we know, his throwing was never great. He got a lot of heat from fans for it, too much I thought. So there he was, recovering from TJ surgery, backing up an offensive catcher in Wilson Ramos. That was an important consideration. Pitchers weren't happy with Ramos, and yet Travis wasn't fully healed yet. The Mets had a good defensive catcher in the system, no-hit Nido.
Further, Travis was 2-25 as a hitter at the point of his release. One could argue that he needed more time, and that was certainly true, but the Mets were trying to win games (and were struggling at bit at the time, making it even tougher). Travis looked lost at the plate, deficient behind it, and the clock was ticking.
Finally Brodie made the tough call to release him -- after going the extra yard, IMO, to keep him.
I was sad to see him go, always believed in his character and his bat, but it just wasn't happening at the time.
It wasn't a "blunder" to release him; it was painful decision that was determined by a variety of circumstances.
On the others: I hated not keeping Murphy. That was a Sandy thing.
Robles had to go. Loved his rubber arm and his velocity, but he was an arsonist. At a certain point, a team has to move on.
Turner was certainly a defensible decision. Look at the stats. If you study them closely, you'll see an uptick in power during his last two months with the Mets. Maybe they should have seen that. For whatever reason, they grew tired of his act. I don't remember too many fans flipping out that we let him go. Given service time, his salary was beginning to rise beyond his production. He was due a raise and the Wilpons owned the team. Jeff trashed him going out the door, so there may have been some tension there.
Personally, I will always believe that Justin started taking steroids at around that time. He grew close with Marlon Byrd -- even credits Byrd for his resurrection -- who was himself a two-time steroid user. At age 30, Justin jumped to 16 HRs after hitting 8 the previous three seasons. At age 31, he hit 27. He was a different guy at the plate, confident, free-wheeling, aggressive, swinging for the fences.
I believe he was helped by some magic juice.
By age 30, he had earned about $5 million over the course of history. He juiced up (I can't prove it), got better, whatever. Signed a $64 million deal with Dodgers. Now he's a free agent and will get paid all over again.
If he turned to illegal supplements, it worked out well -- earning him an extra $100 million. A risk worth taking. I don't blame him.
Maybe at age 30 he learned how to hit!
In conclusion: I think you could only fairly call not signing Murphy a "blunder." In the other cases, the thought process was defensible, and reasonable, it just didn't work out. That's baseball.
Jimmy
Excellent observations, one and all, gentlemen. I think Humphreys and Blake Taylor were of the same argument. When your minor league pitching depth is totally shallow, I would not have traded those two and figured out another OF option to acquire. Again, not dealing from surplus.
Turner truly was not someone to rave about - but he was better than others they ended up using in utility roles, which has often been an area of dreadful performances on the Mets. I would have kept him - at the time, I was focused on it less, and was puzzled but didn't give it a lot of thought.
Robles? I hear those comments, and they are valid, but Sewald and Bashlor stayed and they were awful. Robles had success. I would have moved him to the end of the bullpen and let him work his way back. And that is an excellent point that LAA worked with him on off speed. Dumbfounding they did not do that here.
Murphy to me was simple - his hitting from July to October was simply stunning, it wasn't just a two week hot streak, and he would have been cheap, could have replaced Duda at first, and if needed, switched to 3rd or 2nd. And for 3 yrs/$36, he was pretty cheap. But, then again, so were the Wilpons. If he had been a Yankee, they would have never let him walk.
I hear everything with Travis conerns - but the alternatives were Nido and Rivera, come on, so I would have kept him - ESPECIALLY SINCE RAMOS COULD HAVE GOTTEN HURT - THEN WHAT? And yes, I do not know why stocked LAD let him go after just one game, but they were great with or without him. The Mets had a Greatness Deficit.
Eddie, I hear you - they would need to replace Nimmo with a strong righty OF, courtesy of Cohen's checkbook.
Again, I love Nimmo, not trying to run him out of town, but a more balanced and better defensive outfield would help. Not long ago, I noted that the outfield's 60 game offensive pace, projected over 162 games, probably was the best in Mets history. Or darned close.
We need 4 deep top talent in the OF, with the 4th being better than Marisnick.
No DH in 2021, if that is the dumb decisin, really complicates things for the Mets.
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