Omir Santos Should Be the No. 1...In Buffalo

Havens’ upside blows Tejada out of the water. Tejada’s younger, played at a higher level, and better defensively, which might appear to make him the better prospect, but Havens has the upside edge in virtually every offensive category and despite playing a level lower is well ahead of Tejada in many already. Don’t forget, in terms of offensive numbers, the FSL and EL play pretty similarly, its just that the former is because of park factors and the latter because of more advanced pitching. I can’t wait to see them playing next to each other up the middle next year in Bingo, assuming the Mets don’t go crazy and throw Tejada into Triple-A.

Let Jerry start as many terrible players as he wants in 2010. With any luck, he and Omar will be fired, Francoeur will be non-tendered, and we’ll have a healthy, decent roster in 2011.

But I can think of two reasons to leave him in Triple-A:

1. Depth. He’s the only guy with options, so if you can bring in someone better, having him as insurance in Triple-A would be a good thing. He offsets some injury risk and he’s almost certainly still going to be needed at some point anyway.

2. Delay his service time. This shouldn’t be a huge concern for a team like the Mets if they’re actually in “win-now” mode. But they could essentially save a year of team control if they wait long enough, and its not entirely clear they can win now. In this regard, starting him in Triple-A also makes sense, I think its DanDot’s thinking. If the team is firmly in the hunt once the weather warms up, then you call him up, especially if someone gets injured or is struggling. If they’re not, delaying his service time becomes a more tempting idea.

The biggest problem with this thinking is that 2010 is also his last option year. You don’t want to go into next year unsure of exactly what Niese is capable of. That just leads to more difficult decisions next offseason. So ideally the team can find the right balance where they can leave him down long enough to delay his service time but also call him up early enough to get some value out of him this year and to figure out more precisely how effective he can be.

Niese currently has 107 days of MLB service time (per Cot’s). Lets assume once he comes up, he doesn’t go back down, and that he pitches effectively enough to keep his roster spot for his team-controlled years. That means if he earns 72 days of service time or less this year, he’ll be under team control for an extra year, since he’ll only have 179 days of total service time going into 2011, 180 days=1 year, and players can’t earn more than 180 days per year. The downside is he’ll definitely be a Super 2, even if he’s just a September callup, so he’ll get an extra year of arbitration. So for financial reasons, the ideal time to call him up is towards the end of July. If they call him up between July 24 and July 26, they can have him get two starts in before the trade deadline and delay his service time enough to get the extra year, so that’s what I’d aim for. Either way he’ll go to arbitration in 2013, but if you wait until at least July 24 to call him up, you’ll get an extra non-guaranteed arbitration year in 2016, whereas if you call him up earlier, he’ll be a Free Agent after 2015.

we traded Castro for the same reason, and to save money, and then brought in someone exactly like him for the same price?

instead of bringing up Thole only to have him play behind both of those guys every 3 games or so. I think unless they plan on using him as a starter consistently Thole should stay where he can get the most work.

It’s not that I like to see the Mets lose, it’s just that I have no expectations of success this season.

Of course, the last time I wanted one of my teams to have a horrible season so the management/players would get canned, they ended up winning the Superbowl (Giants, 2007, it seems so long ago that I wanted Coughlin and Eli gone).

Might as well be in win now mode.