Earlier today Jayson Stark of ESPN wrote an article handing out offseason grades for all five of the National League East teams. While Stark is a great baseball journalist I have to disagree with his C- grade for the New York Mets.
Using the most common way of judging a team’s offseason (analyzing the team by big signings and trades), Stark bashes the Mets and even goes as far to say that they were ‘BET (Barely Even Trying)’. He attacks their ‘bargain bin’ signings and says that the team simply let the winter go by while waiting for next winter so $60 million dollars worth will come off the books and the ownership situation can be straightened out.
While he is not wrong about the Mets wanting that $60 million to come off the payroll and the ownership situation causing some problems, I’m sure, to say they were ‘BET’ is just incorrect. When a team is rebuilding, like the Mets have started to do, often that team does not make many moves in the offseason – particularly that first offseason.
First of all, these ‘bargain bin’ signings are nothing to scoff at. How many times have we seen a player resurrect his career (whether he was coming back from an injury or his former team simply gave up on him). Guys like Chris Young, who the Mets signed, have shown the ability to be very effective at the Major League level in the past and thus an incentives based contract has nowhere to go but up. I’d prefer to see this type of signing than what the Yankees did with Pavano a few years ago.
These type of incentive based contracts, to me, are the best kind for a team and the player. If the player performs well then he gets paid for it and the team gets what they were hoping for (everyone wins), but if the player gets hurt again, or doesn’t meet expectations, the team doesn’t have to pay the player for a job he was unable to do.
Second, and the thing that bothered me most about Stark’s article is the grade of a C- for the Mets’ offseason. What Stark fails to realize is that Sandy Alderson, the new Mets GM, is taking the right approach to ‘right the ship.’
For the past four season Mets fans have seen their team fail time and time again. It’s time for a change. The team needs to be rebuilt. And Stark needs to realize that rebuilding a team properly doesn’t mean going out and buying more players (like a lot of the big market teams do).
Instead, rebuilding a franchise involves moving the dead weight salaries, unloading players you’d like to keep but realize that, by the time the team is competitive again, these players will be past their prime, reinvesting in the scouting and development department and keeping yourself from taking on those long, expensive free agent contracts many players get now-a-days.
While the Mets may have benefited from moving Carlos Beltran, Oliver Perez, or Luis Castillo this winte,r the fact is you cannot blame Alderson or the Mets for not doing so. In the case of Beltran his return will be a lot higher if he can show he is healthy.
Likewise, the value of either Perez or Castillo is below the basement floor and so there may be nothing to do but to eat their contracts. Because the Mets did not add a big player to the team or because they were unable to move players who are almost unmovable does not mean the Mets were ‘barely even trying’.
In fact, I applaud the Mets for their off season. Instead of being pressured by the media to go after a big signing and try to turn things around quickly, the Mets have taken the criticism and instead appear ready to rebuild in the appropriate fashion.
As I have shown in my other articles about how to build a championship team (Part 1 and Part 2), you don’t buy championships…you build them. Bravo to the Mets for seeing this and realizing what needs to be done.
With that said, I’d like to applaud Sandy Alderson and the Mets again on their successful off season of starting to clean house and work toward rebuilding the franchise. It won’t get done overnight and they are likely to lose more fans before it gets better, but look at the Phillies, they’re living proof that winning heals all and will bring the fans back to the stadium.
Back in 2009 I wrote an article detailing how the Mets should go about rebuilding their team. Since the topic has become more popular now, I have revised my article and have restated many of the same choices I made in the 2009 article. To read my new article follow this link.
Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com