Cautious Optimist -- The Mets Suck and No One's Going to Throw Us a Pity Party

 

Last week I laid out an incomplete and tentative of what we can call the roster goals for the 2027 Mets.  I just assumed that the roster I had begun to put together would be good enough to achieve my initial goals for the year (without unduly hampering the teams' ability to improve further from there), and ultimately to reach of period of sustained success.

This week we take on the second thought experiment, which asks: 

How close can we get to our goals given where are now? 

Answering that question requires an accounting of our assets and debits, the paths they foreclose and those that remain open. 

Let's begin with the debits, the liabilities that impose constraints on the pathway forward. 

It may strike some readers as odd, but the main liability we face is that every team we are competing with and hoping to deal with, and every player in free agency, knows exactly the position we find ourselves in.    

No one, and I mean, not a single rational person, believes David Stearns when he professes to believe in the talent on this team.  

This team plays the likes of Short and Wagaman; has relied heavily on Melendez and Vientos, and has demoted Mauricio as not good enough.  Stearns lauds Alvarez who has yet to hit ten homers this year and puts the fans on strike out alert every time he approaches the plate. 

If I am not mistaken the combination of Ewing and Benge have roughly the same number of homers as the power hitting trio of Baty, Alvarez and Vientos does.

The Mets stink, and worse everyone knows it.  How could they not.

If there is something worse than that, it is that everyone also knows that the owner is appalled by the situation and is committed to turning it around as soon as possible. There are no secrets.  Just urgency

This is not a strong negotiating position from which to begin the path forward. 

That is the main liability.  But not the only one.  Let's take a close look at the team's roster as doing so will reveal additional liabilities, enough in fact to cripple a financially less well endowed team. 

Here's my assessment of the current Mets roster.  You may disagree with some of my particular assessments, but set those differences aside for the moment and let's look at the big picture, which is downright disheartening.

1. Absolutely top tier players on the roster:  Juan Soto, Francisco Lindor, Bo Bichette.  These are the guys any team would want to have playing for them (other things being equal).  Only Soto is a superstar, however. That's ok as many contending teams have no real superstars. Beyond Soto, it's fair to say that Lindor is among the best at his position, arguably, even a possible Hall of Famer.  Bichette is invariably among the best hitters in baseball with an uncanny ability to hit with runners in scoring position.

2. Plus major league players on the roster (based on either career performance or projections): McLean, Ewing, Benge, Weaver, Holmes, Scott. I'm being generous here in counting rookies and second year players who have not established a significant record of achievement.  I am projecting their futures, and I could turn out to be mistaken in my assessment.

The sad part, however, is that without this charitable projection, the team would be absolutely bereft of genuinely plus quality major leaguers.  Arguably, neither Weaver nor Holmes is truly a plus major leaguer but again they would be welcome additions on virtually any contending team -- even the Dodgers, Braves and Yankees.

3. Better than major league average, but not truly plus players on the roster:  Peralta, Minter, Brazoban, Williams and Torrens

4. Major league average players on the roster (at this point in their careers):  Polanco, Taylor

5. Superior back-up or bench players on the roster: Taylor, Torrens

6. Players who do not belong on any contending teams' major league roster (at this point in their careers): Melendez, Hagaman, Brujan, Vientos, Baty, Senga, Robert (I am including some who've seen time in Queens this year, and while they are not on the roster now may find their way back at a moment's notice)

7. Players who at this point in their careers are marginal major leaguers, some of whom are especially marginal given their contracts:  Manaea, Young, Semien, Tobias, Perez.

8. Most overhyped and rated player: Alvarez

If this list does not depress you, then I implore you to look not just at the names in each category, but the salaries and contracts associated with so many who have no business being on a contending team.  Robert, Semien, Manaea and Senga are marginal to worse and yet are among the club's highest paid players.  Add Polanco to the list given what he has contributed this year and that's a cool 100m of salary going to players whose performance falls somewhere between meh and drech.  

I don't doubt that there are other teams as poorly constructed as are the Mets.  We are not measuring ourselves against the worst, but against the better and, heaven help us, the best.

What to make of this state of affairs?

We can not pretend that it isn't as bad as it is.  We have a number of people we are paying way too much for who are basically untradable and unplayable.  

Tell me if I am missing the boat here, but as I see it, the only players on the current roster who would definitely belong on a highly competitive or championship aspiring team are:  

Soto, Lindor, Bichette, Ewing, Benge, Weaver, Holmes, Torrens and Taylor as backups and Scott based on a mix of performance and possibility.

Others that would be reasonable additions to that group include, Minter, Raley, Brazoban and Williams in the right role.

That's a grand total of 14 players. 

But that doesn't mean we have 14 keepers and 12 we should trade.  Would that it were that simple.  Many of the 12 who we shouldn't keep will bring us somewhere between bubkus and very little in trade, and then only if we pay down their salary.

A few years ago we had two pitchers making over 40 million/year and we had to pay their salaries in order to get a total of 3 allegedly high end prospects in trades for them.  Two of the prospects we secured are gone (Gilbert and Acuna) and doing precious little to help their new teams.  The third remains in our organization and is well on his way to setting an all time minor league strike-out record (Clifford).  

There is literally no one we could trade -- other than Soto or Lindor-- who could bring us prospects as good as the three that Verlander and Scherzer did. 

Worse, the players who can generate decent returns fall largely among the 14 players we would be happy to keep.  As the saying goes, you can't have your cake and eat it.  So we will have to part ways with some of the 14 we would otherwise want to keep, which means that we will need to add more than 12 additional major leaguers to our roster to compete.

But let's see what trades we could make.

At the trade deadline, relievers bring decent returns. In our case,  that means Weaver, Minter, Raley and Brazoban.  Well then, they would not be part of the 14 players we could count on for next year. We are now down to 11.  Only Weaver could bring back players near major league ready or likely ultimately to have a shot at a place in Queens.

Worse, the 100m group of Semien, Polanco, Manaea, Senga and Robert are untradable unless we pay most of Semien's, Polanco's, Senga's and Manaea's salaries; and even if we do, we shouldn't expect returns equal to those we would get from trading Peralta and Weaver straight up.

We can't trade Bichette, given his contract because he has all the leverage.  In addition, let's be honest, can you imagine how much worse we would be without him.

I hope this exercise makes it clear just how flawed a team we have actually been for the past three years.  We have never had an abundance of talent during this period.  The fact is that the Mets over-performed for six months and had a magical run.  But that was not sustainable given the overall talent level.  The proof has been in what has happened since.  Our Mets (talent wise) are much closer to what we have seen over the course of the past season and a half than what we tricked ourselves into believing what they were during the magical season. 

The real Mets are simply not very good.  Truth is they are really bad.

What can we do?

Numero Uno has nothing to do with addressing the major league roster.

The Mets have to fix what they are doing developmentally. If not, they will be caught up in periods of overspending on FAs and making too many trades.  And never experience anything other than episodic success.

Two:

We have to build an anchor.  I've argued that the most efficient and important anchor is provided by a starting rotation.  As I see it, building the strongest starting rotation we can, one that is about as good as any in the majors, means signing two FA pitchers. One must be Skubal regardless of price.  Another should be either Ryan or Gausman on shorter term deals if possible.  

So I can see how we go from where we are now to an anchor of a rotation featuring: Skubal, Ryan/Gausman McLean, Holmes, Scott, Santucci and Thornton as spot starter and long man.  All it takes is money.  Not cheap but doable.

We are closer to building a contender-quality outfield than we are at creating an equally imposing starting rotation, but the latter is more important over the long run.  The outfield is our 'low hanging fruit.' We don't move Ewing and leave the outfield as is, adding only Morabito and resigning Taylor.

So I can see how we go from where we are now to an excellent outfield featuring: Soto, Ewing, Benge with Morabito and Taylor backing them up.

Getting to a stable infield that is good offensively and defensively is going to be a lot more difficult.  We need a power bat in the infield and we are not likely to find one.  In fact, we are going to be challenged for power throughout the line-up.  We need to own up to that.

We have Voit who should be ready in a year or two.  In the interim, I am buying into RVH's suggestion that we sign Arraez to 2yr contract with an option.  I still prefer a trade for Contreras, but if Boston played the Mets another six games, they'd be in the heart of the race in the American League East and would no longer be potential sellers.  In that case, I would pursue RVH's suggestion that we sign Walker as a FA for a year.

Let's say we can put together a decent infield whose floor is relatively high, whose ceiling is not, and is overall not perfectly time aligned with our outfield or starting rotation.

Speaking of the rotation, it's equally difficult to imagine how we put together as good or better a bullpen than the one we have this year especially because our best trade chips are relievers, and, to express the obvious, you can't build a contender quality bullpen if you trade your most valuable relievers -- and trade we must. 

The Mets' best relievers are: Weaver, Mintor, Raley, in that order, then a toss up between Williams and Brazoban.  The only two under contract are Weaver and Williams.  The other three are free agents, so you have to trade them because you are not going to give any of them a qualifying offer. Moreover, given the year's they've each had, they would all want to explore the FA market, so there is no hope of extending any of them before the season ends.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that though Weaver is under control for next year, he is the Mets' reliever most likely to garner high end prospects in a trade. The problem is that if you trade Weaver, your bullpen is measurably worse. 

I'd be willing to trade Williams, but his contract is a barrier and his performance over the past two seasons as a closer for the Yankees and Mets raises reasonable concerns about whether he is up to the task at this point in his career.  So I probably can't trade him without paying down a part of his salary and I can't imagine that I would get back something all that good in return.

My best option for next year is to hold on to both Williams and Weaver and maybe reverse their roles.  I have to settle for trading the other three at the deadline and seeing if i want to enter the FA bidding for any of them in the offseason.  

A bullpen is like an insurance policy you take out on your investment in starting pitching.  The Mets cannot afford to get worse in the bullpen given their investment in starting pitching.  But it is hard to see how they avoid doing so. 

We're not done assessing the Mets' current situation, but it's worth summarizing our initial observations and the likely situation it puts the Mets in as far as the goal of competing next year goes.

Let's review where we stand so far 

We don't have to do much to ensure that we put out a top tier outfield alignment on the field day in and day out.  

If we refuse to be outbid on Skubal, we can get pretty close to guaranteeing that we have one of the best starting rotations in the majors.

Those two accomplishments would be genuine achievements on the road to sustained success. 

A great starting rotation calls for a heavy investment in the insurance a good bullpen provides.  Yet our bullpen is the most likely unit to be torn down as several of the relievers we count on are pending free agents, who we lose one way or another.

Worse, we will do Ok in those trades, but nowhere near as well as we would were we to make Weaver available.  But doing so is basically a sin since he is the best of the bunch and under our control for next year!  

I don't think we can feel confident that we can give up the likes of Weaver, Minter, Raley and Brazoban and maintain a quality bullpen. Quite the contrary.

Short of massive expenditures on free agent relievers our best hope is in the top tier relievers we have in the minors including Lambert and Ross, both of whom have been spotty this year.  The other wild card is Tong who may be promoted to the majors to serve as a high leverage reliever until the team decides whether he can become of rotation worthy starter.

The infield requires work just to be in the same general league as starting pitching and the outfield.   No matter what we do we will face a shortage of power in the infield. We are looking to create a high baseline holding pattern in the infield.  If we do better than that -- great.  We just can't afford to do worse than that.

One more issue.

Trade Alvarez

I want to go on record in favor of trading Alvarez.  I have never been sold on him offensively.  No one is sold on him defensively.  He plays the hardest position to fill for most teams.  A competition for his services is the only other asset we have (other than Soto or Lindor) capable of bringing major league ready talent capable of helping the team next year and beyond. 

His trade value is high for a number of reasons, only a few of which make sense to me.  Catchers are hard to come by.  I get that. He's young and energetic.  He's under team control for several more years.  His salary is low.  I get all that as well.

He once hit more than 20 homers in a season.  He was once the number one prospect in all of minor league baseball.  And apparently, everyone discounts his now two years of power outage.  I don't get that. Amazingly, his advocates cannot see that his offensive woes are the product of very poor kinematic sequence that he has taken no steps to rectify.  I definitely don't get that.

He is the poster child for powerless effort, and yet this seems to go unnoticed.  It won't go unnoticed forever.  The time to move him is upon us.

This means that the Mets will need to find another catcher over the off season.  The line-up can withstand a relative black hole behind the plate. What it cannot afford is having an all star staff of starters throwing to a defensively challenged catcher who can't call a good game. 

The pitching staff demands more, and as presently constructed the offense should be good enough to withstand one black hole at the catcher's position which is a hell of an improvement over the three to four black holes that have graced the line-up over the past two years.

The team is biding time until Yovany is ready to take over the reins three years from now.  In the meanwhile, what's wrong with a little bit of 'run prevention.'

The Mets are plenty bad, but can get significantly better by next year, but admittedly at great expense both financial --Skubal, Ryan/Gausman, Arraez, Walker?, a catcher? and all those miserable contracts: Senga, Manaea, Semien, and emotional --all those failed baby Mets, Baty, Vientos, Mauricio.  

A lot of work and a lot of money.  But that's the price the Mets are going to have to pay to turn this around now.  It's the price you pay for poor decisions, terrible contracts and underperformance.  It's also the price you pay when you allow a magical not repeatable finish delude you into thinking your team is something it's not. 

Let's do it right this time.  It's never too early to get on the right path.