Reese Kaplan -- Closing the Door Makes Sense, but Opening it for...???

As speculated when the NY Post broke the story last week, the Mets just announced they were cutting former 40-man roster position holder Khalil Lee when the domestic violence incident came to light. 

At the time I speculated that the club would do well to rid themselves of this man to send a message to fellow ballplayers (and other Mets employees) that such behavior would not be tolerated. The fact that Lee was a mediocre minor leaguer made this decision much easier to make than if he'd been a blue chip prospect.

Going through his statistics you see a guy with a career .247 average who occasionally flashed power, once posted an eye popping 53 stolen bases, but as of late did very little of anything. His final 2022 stats in Syracuse included a .211 average with 10 HRs, 37 RBIs and 14 stolen bases. His SLG, OBP and OPS numbers were nothing spectacular for his whole baseball career, so he will look to catch on with an independent minor league team, a squad offshore somewhere or find out what it's like if he receives criminal penalties for how he treated his ex girlfriend.

Congratulations to the Mets for doing the right thing. However...

Spots on the 40-man roster are not exactly of negligible value. There are minor leaguers who right now are going to receive non-roster invitations to Spring Training in Port St. Lucie. Every now and then someone emerges during the preseason whose performance exceeds expectations or addresses a specific team need. Recently the Mets found both position players and pitchers who fit that mold.

The Mets instead immediately ran out and signed a cut player from another club to take Lee's former home of the 40-man roster. The player in question was a relief pitcher by the name of Sam Coonrod whose own former Philadelphia Phillies career ended when that club signed free agent Josh Harrison and they needed to create a spot on their roster for the utility man.

So who exactly is Sam Coonrod and why did the Mets choose to sign him? Could it be that the Mets felt it was a dig at one of their division rivals? Were they simply taking a chance that he could blossom into something special? Or was it his past performance that made Billy Eppler and company say, "Yeah, he's our guy!" Well, the possibilities of options one and two could possibly exist, but going over his back of the baseball card statistics suggest that he's not exactly Cy Young material.

At age 30, you're looking at a guy who has logged over 100 games in the major leagues starting at age 26, but the experience is nothing to warrant bragging. He's sporting a 7-5 record with a career 5.27 ERA in the majors. Now if he'd done that while having a cup of coffee as a former September call-up or when fighting back injury, you might think it doesn't mean anything, but when you've had 97 innings of work, it suggests a trend.

So if you delve deeper into the minor leagues, then you see a guy whose ERA is significantly better a 3.77, but with a losing record spread over 444 innings pitched he fanned nearly 1 per inning but also gave up 4 walks per every nine innings pitched. His WHIP was nearly 1.300 and nothing jumps out as deserving of a winning team's 40-man roster spot, hence the Phillies' decision. 

While it's possible the in-depth pitching struggles could make him into a cubic zirconia in the rough, the likelihood of him emerging as a diamond during his age 31 season is slim at best.

So that brings us back to the question of why...why sign Coonrod to fill the open roster spot? Many here are more attuned to the minors and prospect rankings than I am, but it would seem there are likely more deserving folks in-house already as well as free agents who could be lured onto the Mets who have a track record of greater quality.

Granted, a well behaved member of the organization would be appreciated more than one facing criminal charges, but if the objective is to employ the best of the best, on paper at least this move makes little sense.