OK, class.
In recent weeks, Professor Tom has shared a few key things:
1) The non-performers on the Mets annually are way too many and get way too many at bats and innings to allow this team to excel.
2) The luxury tax cap is a cost of doing successful business in many cases. Just look at the 3 biggest spenders in that regard over the years: the Yankees, Dodgers, and Red Sox. Sure there are teams like the Rays. But the Mets are not about to morph into the low-cost, excellent Rays any time soon by trying to contain payroll costs in the short run.
3) Smart teams know when to hold 'em, and know when to fold 'em. Justin Turner, Daniel Murphy, Travis d'Arnaud and Hansel Robles are just 4 recent GLARING examples of that - cases where there was a SHORTAGE of talent on the team that could do what they were capable of, yet they were foolishly dumped.
Real teams with deep, deep pockets do not fear busting through the luxury tax cap, especially when the existing team already has a lot of talented players.
This Mets team had tons of talent at the top in 2020...
But also had tons of truly miserable performers.
The latter group killed this team - the (as I recall it) 14 guys in 2020 with ERAs over 5.00 threw HALF their innings, allowed 7.4 runs per 9 innings, and went 8-26.
Who can make the playoffs with THAT?
Answer? No one.
Hard to have an 8-26 contingent and make the playoffs in a 162 game season - impossible to do in a 60 game season. As a reminder, the rest of the staff went 18-8. What a disparity.
And don't think for a second that having absolute dreck like those gosh-awful 2020 bottom-half pitchers and, to a lesser degree hitless utility hitters who also failed, does not put huge pressure to perform on everyone else.
Would Pete Alonso have had such an off year, for instance, if those clowns who went 8-26 instead were competent enough to have gone 16-18?
I postulate that "WOULD NOT" as the correct answer.
A pressure’s-off Pete would have done much better.
The Wilpon Mets annually counted on luck that rarely showed up.
In 2015, it did, Their lower end hitters hitting about .180 in about 800 at bats (as I recall) through mid-July, and as a result, the team was on the verge of falling out of the race.
Then, David Wright revived, Daniel Murphy transformed, and Messrs. Cespedes, Uribe, Johnson, and Reed were added and miraculously, baseball's least potent offense turned into baseball's most potent offense the rest of the way and its bullpen got a boost.
That was a confluence of a lot of luck. Luck is not a real baseball strategy, although it works once every few decades.
The simple fix for 2021 is to greatly minimize the number of at bats and innings of such miserable Mets performers.
Get REAL BACK-HALF PLAYERS, not the types of bums the Mets use in their back half virtually every season.
Let me put it to you this way - do you ever, in your wildest dreams, think that the Yankees or Dodgers would have kept using two guys like Paul Sewald and Tyler Bashlor until they were 1-21?
Absolutely ZERO chance of that occurring, because for those teams, trying to skate by on AAA talent is not an option.
The top playoff teams do exactly that - those low competence guys play hardly at all for them.
That is what the Mets need to do in 2021, if at all possible.
It is time for the Mets to no longer half step it and hope that luck is a viable strategy.
It is time to act upon what it takes to make the Mets a year-in, year-out playoffs participant.
Mr. Cohen, the fans deserve no less.
What's in it for you, bottom line?
WINNING...AND DOMINANCE.
Spend a lot more, wisely of course, and turnstiles will spin faster, concessions will rock and roll, playoff money will pour in, and franchise value will climb.
Please do it. Do it big.
So, dear reader, you are the big bucks, build me a winner.
Which players will do that?
