Some 2011 Ideas

We have about 1/5th the money that you just handed out in contracts.

3/25 to Jake Westbrook? Really?
2/13 for JJ Hardy, who has had an OPS+ of 81 the past two seasons and hasn’t been able to keep his ass on the field?

we need a second baseman relief pitching, starting pitching and a catcher for short term

but I think throwing all that money at nominal upgrades to the rotation is a considerable mistake. You are specifically moving the Mets best or second best pitcher this year—Dickey—to the spot starter role, and paying many millions for the privilege of doing so. In point of fact, you are downgrading the rotation by doing this.

It makes much more sense, if you want to add pitching, to either add a real stud, or add depth to the middle of the rotation (what I call the ’86 Mets strategy) or spend money elsewhere while taking out at least some insurance by creating depth in the rotation at the back end. For 2011 the Mets already have

Santana—still an ace, albeit moving into the bottom half of that grouping in the NL.

Pelfrey—all his brilliance into June, then his sheer awfulness since, shouldn’t blind us to the fact that he’s still what he’s always been: A durable, middle of the rotation starter.

Dickey—it’s impossible to know how he’ll pitch in 2011, but there’s every reason to be optimistic. I don’t expect another acelike performance, but I think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect him to pitch at least as well as Pelfrey will. That’s your second midrotation guy.

Niese—if he can finish the year uninjured and Manuel doesn’t blow out his arm through overwork in that desperate attempt you know the Mets will make in mid-September to try to guarantee a .500+ season, Niese is your third starter with middle of the rotation stuff, and he could well turn into a solid #2.

Given those four guys are healthy at season’s end, you have your ace, two midrotation guys with #2 upside, and Pelfrey, a solid #3.

1) Going after Cliff Lee would turn this into the majors best rotation. It makes Mike Pelfrey your #5 starter, and means that an injury to Dickey or Niese still leaves you with an excellent rotation. If all five of these guys are healthy, and you avoid having three black holes in your starting lienup, that team could win 100 games. Easily.

2) Adding only a middle of the rotation guy still give the Mets a deep rotation, one with every likelihood of having an above average starter at every slot. That’s what the 86 Mets had. No true ace, but a very good chance of winning every night. Further, it means you can stand losing anyone but Santana for the season and still have an above average rotation. You could lose two of those guys, and with a little luck and a judicious trade, still contend for the postseason.

3) Or, go cheap. Beg Figgy to come back. And pick up an arm for 2m, someone who can put up a 5.50 ERA from the fifth spot—the kind of guy that doesn’t kill you, and who keeps you from having to fall back on the 2011 version of Jose Lima. Spend your money elsewhere, if indeed you have any to spend, and hope that a rotation around 5th or 6th among the NLs 15 teams gives you a shot at the postseason. We’ve learned watching this year’s club that simply keeping replacement and sub-replacement level guys off the field would have meant the Mets would still be contending for the postseason as of today.

1. $25M is a lot to be locked into Jake Westbrook in order to downgrade your rotation by removing RA Dickey for him. The Mets need 1 FA SP, tops. If you want depth for AAA, target a cheap young guy with options in a trade somewhere.

2. If you are set on signing JJ Hardy, you might as well just trade Reyes for something good. I like the defense just fine with Reyes at SS though, I’d just as soon think of extending him a few years instead.

3. I might put Thad Levine, currently an assistant GM in Texas, at the top of the list of GM candidates. Seems like a good guy for blending the scouting and stats in the decision making. You could probably keep Omar somewhere on the scouting side, and get a lot smarter overall in player evaluation.

in house replacement. This team needs to be gutted from top to bottom. Starting with GM, Manager, Coaches, Scouting dept, Medical staff, ETC. No in house replacements at all. This team has sucked for so long we need a new look. And unfortunatley Reyes will be traded but if he continues to have a sub par season we need to wait until his value is at its highest. Gut it and rebuild.

a lot of the points that are being made here.

1) It seems as if most people would be OK with giving someone like Orlando Hudson or Ty Wigginton a 1 year deal while we develop Tejada, and I can live with that just fine.

2) For Starting Pitching, I frankly have no consistent faith in Mike Pelfrey. His xFIP figures have all been above 4.4 and (like Bronson Arroyo) is just too inconsistent to not have a sufficient backup plan for. I can understand keeping Dickey in the rotation with his performance, I just don’t know what to expect out of him.

I think another, reliable arm (if not 2, though with this FA class I can accept 1) is a necessity. Jorge De La Rosa is my guy for that job.

Also, as far gm’s go, personally I’d love someone like Thad Levine (who was my first choice until I found out he was very soft spoken and I just don’t know how well that would mesh with the Wilpons, especially because the organization needs someone to push the Wilpons aside and take charge. But if he’s cool with them, Levine or Dan Jennings for the Marlins would be good choices.

I would hazard a guess that the Mets are probably going to be in the same ballpark, spending-wise, as they are this year. The payroll this year, according to Cot’s, is $126.4 million. I’ll take a random stab and assume that the budget for next year is $130 million.

Going into the offseason, as per Adam Rubin’s calculations, the Mets have 9 players making $113.2 million, which gives you roughly $17 million to play with for the rest of the roster. But a fair portion of that money would go into major league minimum contracts, which drives your leftover money down to something like $10 million (less, of course, the ML minimum for the players you sign). On my count, you’re adding $30.1 million, or so, which, after the ML minimums are deducted from those, you’re actually at something like $27 or $28 million. So basically, on this plan, assuming there is a budget of $130 million, you’d have to cut $17 million out.

Based on that, I would probably dump Westbrook and flip Reyes for prospects (after picking up his option), if I were using this plan as a baseline. I still think that would leave you with a fairly interesting club going into 2011.

I absolutely agree with letting Feliciano walk. He’s going to implode at some point; may as well get out in front of that one and claim a couple of draft picks in the process.

Finally, I think it’s pretty clear that the Mets’ grand strategy for this offseason should be “do no harm for 2012.” A bunch of contracts are coming off the books after next season, and the second half of the current youth infusion should be ML ready by then. There’s a lot of flexibility forthcoming, and a bunch of tradeable assets maturing, and I think that everything they do now should be with an eye towards 2012. As much as I’d love for 2011 to be a playoff season, based on these long-term contracts, it seems like the best you can do is improve the team at the margins and hope for rebound years from Beltran, Bay, et al (full seasons of vintage Beltran and Bay, combined with the rest of this team, would be playoff-caliber or very close). But there are still a couple of months to mull this over, certainly.

Does not compute

If the Wilpon’s don’t get rid of Manuel and Minaya forgetaboutit. This 2010 team is a
p-e-r-f-e-c-t example of how low a poorly managed team can get. Look at yesterday’s line up-three players not hitting their own weight! What in Gods name is Tejada doing in the Major Leagues? The days of having a good glove and no bat are long gone. IE Rafael Santana & Rey Ordonez. What kind of message does that send to the rest of the team? If Dickey does’nt pitch a gem like that—it’s over.
Let’s just see what kinda B/S next year will bring. This year—no excuses- poor management and underachievement- they go hand in hand.

Lots of good ideas in this article & comments. I do see a consensus here about what is needed: “addition by subtraction”. The team would be much improved by the absence of Castillo, Francouer, Perez, etc. This is beginning to remind me of the Bonilla-Coleman-Murray era Mets: high priced players not living up to their contracts & blocking minor league talent from being promoted. Not claiming that they’re All-Star material, but I believe most Mets fans would rather see what Evans, Turner, Gee, Duda, & a few other minor leaguers could do up with the big club. At least Martinez & Tejada got promoted & are seeing a good amount of playing time (Hessman also to a lesser extent).

As others have said, we lead the majors in shutouts, the pitching staff has been pretty good overall. I’d save the money and go with Misch or Gee for 5th starter and focus on some offense. Here’s our problem: we have a cavernous stadium for half our games and a lineup that features strikeout-intense power hitters. YTD K’s: Ike 105, Wright 126, Bay 91, Frenchy 66. If they were hitting homers like crazy you could live with that, but that’s never going to happen playing half their games in Citi Field. We need some guys who make contact, work the count, draw walks and get on base, that can play hit and run or steal and manufacture runs.

Hes the GM of Texas right now but he has an opt out clause in case of an ownership change. He grew up a Met fan I read it in a article on hardballtalk.com. He built the best farm system in baseball and a team that has a legit shot at making the world series