Reese Kaplan -- Money Thrown Away in Trades and Free Agency

The old Wilpon way of doing business -- finding scrap heap picks and undervalued bargains -- didn’t amount to much in the way of winning ball games.  The team tried to find aces in the hole from other teams’ castoffs and seldom did it work out to even a mediocre level.  

Wednesday the word came out that Dellin Betances who was on the path to a nearly Hall of Fame career before his injury with the Yankees was done for the year for season-ending shoulder surgery.  Up until his arrival in Queens Betances was a genuine marvel.  Even factoring in his two awful partial seasons with the Mets, Betances has a career 21-23 record with a 2.53 ERA, 14.2 Ks per 9 IP and a WHIP of 1.073.  His hits per 9 IP was a very tidy 240 in over 394 IP.  The only blemish on his record was his control.  He gave away 4.2 free passes per 9 IP but compensated for it with the stinginess of hits allowed and the terrific strikeout numbers.  

Now the Wilpons thought that signing the castoff Yankee was a smart thing because once he became healthy he was likely going to be quite a fetch.  At just $6.75 million per season, you were paying relative chump change for plaque-worthy performance. That would be true if he was healthy, but he turned out to be another in a long line of never healthy players that proved to be payroll dollars simply thrown away.  

The bigger example recently was the puzzling contract offer to Jed Lowrie to become a part of the eight-figure salary club with a  two year deal for $20 million which represented quite a jump from his 2018 paycheck of just $6 million for Oakland.  For those two years (well, one plus ⅓ of a year in 2020) the Mets received a whopping 7 ABs in total which is even less than they got from Betances with his 12.2 IP.  Yet for Betances they “only” squandered $13.5 million.  That’s a full $6.5 million less than the hefty paychecks paid to the IL permanent resident in Lowrie. 

 

Some might even venture up Carlos Carrasco as part of this ignominious club since he was a part of that deal to bring Francisco Lindor to New York where he’s had first-year issues like Carlos Beltran did when signed to become a Met.  Carrasco hasn’t thrown a pitch for the club all year and now we’re hearing late August as the earliest time to hope for him.  For his injury the Mets are forking over $12 million with another $12 million due in 2022 and either $14 million or a $3 million buyout in 2023.  To be fair, it’s not his arm that’s an issue, but elbow soreness in the Spring accompanied by a hamstring issue.  The Mets have become very familiar with the latter as others have been felled by similar problems this season.  

If you go back through the annals of Mets history you can uncover quite a few others whose health did not allow them to perform as expected.  It’s part of the gamble when you trade for new players or sign free agents.  No one can guess how ready they will be to play at the level emblazoned on the back of their baseball cards.  To be fair, other clubs are experiencing similar situations with Mike Trout out for the Angels, Alex Bregman out for the Astros and George Springer out for most of the year for the Blue Jays.  No one can guarantee a player will stay healthy without ever hitting the IL.