TIME TO THINK BIG
If you don’t want Mets to trade Jake or Noah, then they must take run at Machado or Harper
On Friday night Jacob deGrom delivered exactly the type of pitching brilliance to support what many Mets’ fans were yelling at me via their digital devices that same day:
“You’re crazy for wanting to trade this guy.”
But here’s the point a lot of folks missed, perhaps because they were dazed and confused — and mad as hell, let’s be honest —at seeing deGrom and Noah Syndergaard pictured as Yankees on our Daily News back page:
If I were the Mets, I’d do everything possible not to trade deGrom and Syndergaard.
The problem is that, without bluechip talent coming from the farm system, the only way they can put a championship-caliber team around their two aces in the coming years is by cashing in on the rare chance to sign a free-agent superstar who hasn’t even hit his prime yet.
Yep, Manny Machado or Bryce Harper.
I know, I know, it’s a pipe dream, based on the way this franchise has operated for a decade now, apparently because of the fallout from the Bernie Madoff scandal.
However, that shouldn’t be the case for a team in New York, and there was a time not so long ago, remember, when the Mets were biggame hunters with Omar Minaya as GM, going to the top of the market to sign the likes of Carlos Beltran, Pedro Martinez, and Billy Wagner, as well as pulling something of a Giancarlo Stanton-like trade with the Marlins to get Carlos Delgado.
And they did go big for Yoenis Cespedes after the 2016 season, so it’s not like they’ve tried to do it completely on the cheap even lately.
Yet GM Sandy Alderson did go bargain-hunting last winter, and the Mets have lowered expectations regarding payroll to the point where nobody in baseball believes they’ll make a run at either Machado or Harper.
But without signing one of them, as well as a free-agent pitcher like Dallas Keuchel, Charlie Morton, or Patrick Corbin, you can’t convince me they have enough to win championships.
They need more starting pitching behind deGrom and Syndergaard, their bullpen is iffy, and even if Cespedes stays healthy and Michael Conforto finds his stroke, the Mets need more offense as well.
And that was the point of my column on Friday: if they want to be a team that can win 80-something games and hope for a wild-card berth, they can try to patch this together around deGrom and Syndergaard, but even that will get much tougher, considering how quickly the Braves and Phillies are emerging from their rebuilds to win with impressive young players.
And if winning a championship is the goal, which it should be, their best hope might be using deGrom and/or Syndergaard to acquire a potential nucleus of blue-chippers.
Unless the experts are wrong about the farm system, that is. Double-A first baseman Peter Alonso is offering some hope in that regard, hitting .355 with 11 home runs for Binghamton, yet the consensus among scouts and minor-league talent evaluators is that the Mets lack top prospects at the upper levels of their system.
Coming into the season, in fact, Baseball America ranked only one Met on its Top 100 list of prospects, and that was 19-year-old shortstop Andres Gimenez, who is playing in Class A St. Lucie.
No surprise, then, the same publication ranked the Mets’ farm system No. 27 among the 30 organizations in baseball.
And this at a time when the sport is trending younger than ever, it seems, with so many players building around young stars in their early-to-mid 20s, while the Mets are relying heavily on position players in their 30s, which usually increases the likelihood of injuries.
Ok, so if the Mets don’t have young studs on the way, their only other avenue to winning big is by significantly raising the payroll.
I don’t mean spending the way they did last winter, either, as Alderson took advantage of a buyers’ market to sign the likes of Jay Bruce, Todd Frazier and Jason Vargas to what seemed to be bargain contracts — as well as getting Adrian Gonzalez at minimum salary after he was released by the Braves.
All of them are in their 30s, and in an era when analytics are making teams more and more wary of over-30 players, that’s the drawback of relying on free agency these days.
Machado and Harper, meanwhile, will both be 26 this winter, which is why each is expected to command deals of 10-12 years worth $350 million or more. If that’s unthinkable for the Mets, tell me how they’re going to win big, even with deGrom and Syndergaard.
Personally, I’d hate to see deGrom, in particular, be dealt. He’s as gutty as he is talented, as much fun to watch as any pitcher in baseball. Hey, I’ve picked the guy to win the NL Cy Young Award two years in a row now, believing he’s that good.
But as I wrote Friday, the Mets are coming to a crossroads, especially as the competition in the NL East is ramping up quickly, where they’ll have to do something bold to keep their championship window open.
I’m all for them spending big on Machado or Harper, rather than trading deGrom or Syndergaard at some point to kick off another rebuild. But I’ll believe it when I see it.
BELTIN’ THE UMPS Two weeks ago Frazier raised eyebrows with
comments about how poor he thought umpiring behind the plate has been this season, but Giants’ first baseman Brandon Belt took the criticism to a different level a few days ago with what amounted to a shocking accusation about Doug Eddings.
After Eddings called him out on a pitch that was clearly outside, Belt essentially said the umpire is more interested in getting the game over than getting the call right.
“It’s tough because you hope that an umpire doesn’t affect a game like that,” Belt said. “But he did, and I’m not sure it wasn’t on purpose either. You’ve heard that guy multiple times insinuate he’s trying to get through the game fast. And then he makes calls like that that I can’t imagine that he really thought was a strike. You’ve got to wonder.
“I’m not here to talk bad about umpires. You know, 99.9 percent of the umpires are great, and I actually enjoy talking to them. There’s just some times when you have a feeling that one or two of
them are trying to get the game over with, whether it’s through what they saw or what they do. And that just can’t happen. You can’t have those guys affecting careers and affecting games like that.”
Let’s hope Belt wasn’t merely frustrated by the strikeout and understood the seriousness of such an accusation. And if so, let’s hope Joe Torre, who reached out to Belt the next day, takes it seriously enough to do a thorough investigation.
As it is, MLB needs to be more transparent in its disciplining of umpires who behave unprofessionally, as in the case of Marty Foster ejecting Anthony Rendon a few weeks ago basically for dropping his bat after a strike three call. Foster should have been suspended for such a ridiculous ejection. Eddings should face harsh punishment if MLB finds evidence to support Belt’s accusation.
KERSHAW DEAL?
If the floundering Dodgers can’t turn their season around, would they dare to trade Clayton Kershaw in July, knowing he’s likely to opt out of his contract at season’s end? A scout I talked to this week mentioned the possibility of the Dodgers doing with Kershaw what the Yankees did with Aroldis Chapman, trading him as a rental for a top prospect — Gleyber Torres — and then re-signing him as a free agent. “I’m sure a contender in need of a starter would give up value for Kershaw as a rental, especially after seeing what (Justin) Verlander did for Houston last year,” the scout said. “But it would be a lot trickier. Chapman was a Yankee for half a season when they traded him, where Kershaw is an icon in LA. It might create some hard feelings that would hurt their chances of resigning him.” Actually, the scout wondered if GM Andrew Friedman and the Dodgers’ analytics-heavy front office might prefer not to re-sign Kershaw for huge money if he does opt out, with his recent history of injuries looming as something of a red flag in his 30s. “The data might be telling them it won’t be a cost-efficient signing,” the scout said. “But I’m sure there will be a ton of public pressure there to re-sign him.”