Mike's Mets - Thoughts on George Springer and Jared Porter

 

By Mike Steffanos January 20, 2021 

I started writing a post about Jared Porter yesterday, but then doctor appointments chewed up the majority of my day. I have a few thoughts on that matter that I'll share later in this post, but I thought I would weigh in on George Springer signing with the Blue Jays first. I spent most of this offseason pretty sure that Springer would sign with the Mets, especially once they signed James McCann to be their starting catcher. I stopped believing that Springer would be a Met the day the Francisco Lindor trade was announced. I still hoped that the Mets might somehow land the guy, but I knew that it would require some luck. The reality of the situation was that the Blue Jays were able to offer more than the Mets were comfortable with to land the guy. Frankly, if the rumors that the Mets were willing to go up to north of $120 million to land Springer are true, I find it hard to find fault with that effort.

There might come a day when the Mets have demonstrated to the rest of baseball that they are the well-run perennial contender which we're all hoping they will become. At that point, I wouldn't be surprised at all to find a good player willing to take less money to play for the Mets for a chance to win. Steve Cohen's purchase of the Mets has energized the fan base and put the rest of baseball on notice that these aren't the Wilpon Mets anymore, but it's going to take on the field success for the club to start proving to the rest of baseball that they're not the same old Mets. The whole Porter fiasco certainly didn't help in that regard, either, although the Mets certainly made the right move by firing the guy immediately.

This was always going to be a multi-year project, although it's still incumbent on the Mets to continue to make moves to be as good as possible this coming season. There is still plenty of work to be done. The Mets aren't going to get every one of their potential targets, whether it's George Springer, Brad Hand or any other name linked with them. But there are a lot of guys out there and a lot of ways for the Mets to get better for next year.

I'd like to see the Mets make a real effort to engage Francisco Lindor and Michael Conforto in talks for long-term contracts. I know both players are looking for substantial contracts, but the Mets are either going to retain those guys past this season or pay for free agent replacements. Top SS prospect Ronny Mauricio is still quite a distance away at age 19, and the highest rated OF the Mets have in their system is Pete Crow-Armstrong, who hasn't even played at any minor league level yet.

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And now on to (sigh) former Mets GM Jared Porter. There has already been a lot written about the guy. Some of it was quite good, like Deesha Thosar's excellent piece on what it's like to be a woman covering baseball, or another fine one by Brittany Ghiroli in The Athletic. Plenty of it was of the scoldy, I'm taking the moral high ground point of view that I honestly can't stand.

The truth is, the acts that got Jared Porter fired were reprehensible and unforgivable. Taking the moral high ground over a man like that doesn't really take much, and solves little beyond allowing a writer to reprimand another person's actions while simultaneously asserting their own moral superiority. I find that sort of thing tiresome. Hey, I may be a jerk, but I didn't send a woman dozens of unsolicited texts culminating with a picture of something better kept in my pants. That's a pretty low bar to clear, indeed.

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