Alderson was on WFAN yesterday
afternoon. He said all the right things and was careful not to go too far in
any direction. I did think he made a mistake admitting that he had secretly
flown in Travis d’Arnaud for a physical before
the trade was completed. Can you do that? I can tell you right now what he
didn’t say and that is… if he had the right offer for the right
outfielder/relief pitcher, he would have signed him before he went on the
radio. This is how the process works. Relief pitchers are only now starting to
sign anywhere, all the starters out there have both issues and agents that want
multiple years, and what’s left of the outfield FA pool is either attached to
the loss of a draft pick, or also trying to oversold by their agent. The
waiting out process worked for d’Arnaud. It may work here but the talent pool
is less. If you missed the call, you missed nothing.
I put on the end of MLB Tonight
before the Mets Hot Stove on SNY and they were breaking down great sophomore
pitchers. Matt Harvey came up and John Smoltz rated him a ‘solid 2’. Then it became Mitch Williams turn… who said Harvey was an ace and he
compared him to a young Roger Clemens. Holy
shit, Mitch. I then watched him on SNY
with Bobby Ojeda and you have to walk away that Harvey is just something
special and worth every penny to build a pitching staff around. So far, that
plan included Jon Niese, and Dillon Gee in 2013, Zack
Wheeler in 2014, and Noah Syndergaard in
2015. Sounds like a good plan to me.
Bobby Parnell signed a 1-yr, $1.7mil
contract with the Mets to avoid arbitration. I remember when he first joined
the Mets and his father used to read Mack’s Mets. The Mets had Parnell in the
programs as ‘Robert’ Parnell, but the father told me to never refer to him as
that. He was ‘Bobby’ and I would get a lot more out of my meetings with him if
I called him by the right name. As it turned out, I never shared a word with
Parnell, and I never got a chance to ask
his father how the whole Bobby/Robert thing happened. Just thought you would
find this interesting.
