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AAOP: Second Place

By Eric Simon

The second-best AAOP entry we received -- with an average score of 8.00 -- was My Day in Omar's head by MangoMetsFan. The highlights.

  • Traded Luis Castillo for Albert Arias (or any reliever, really).
  • Signed Carlos Delgado for one year, $5 million. Delgado's health is a huge question mark but this deal is pretty low-risk. If he plays 120 games he'll be worth this and more.
  • Signed Matt Holliday for six years, $108 million. He's the only superstar on the free agent market, and this move was included in 25 of 42 AAOPs (60%).
  • Signed Ben Sheets for one year, $3 million, with incentives that could bring it to $10 million. Sheets didn't pitch at all in 2009, so this is a high-upside signing with a fairly low probability of that upside being realized.
  • Signed Erik Bedard to same deal as Sheets, expecting Bedard to pitch maybe half of the season.
  • Signed Gregg Zaun for one year, $2 million. Zaun actually signed with the Brewers for $1.9 million, so the contract was spot-on.
  • Signed Placido Polanco for two years, $12 million. Got the money right, but Polanco signed with the Phillies for three years. His peanut-shaped head would have been a nice fit at second.
  • Traded Brian Stokes for basically nothing.
  • Signed Pedro Feliciano to a three-year deal.
  • Signed Nelson Figueroa as rotation insurance.
  • Signed Kelvim Escobar to a minor-league contract. I'll bet Escobar gets a big-league deal from someone, maybe even the Mets.

    • Signing both Sheets and Bedard is an interesting move, and even if each contributes just a half-season of solid pitching they'd be doing so at $6-8 million combined, which is a pretty good return on investment. The rotation overall is still suspect, with Mike Pelfrey, Oliver Perez, and John Maine slotting in behind Johan Santana. Figueroa provides some depth there, but the over/under on the number of these starters who will spend time on the disabled list in 2010 is four. Also, if Delgado is hurt then the Mets are back to Daniel Murphy at first, which is a little frightening. Still, the Mets improved their offense considerably with the signings of Holliday and Polanco and managed to improve their defense at the same time.

    One thing that distinguished this entry from the pack was the inclusion of some substantive commentary at the outset, as MangoMetsFan wrote a bit about the current state of the Mets and described what the Mets' offseason strategy should be before ultimately unfurling his game plan. He also included detailed WAR and salary projections for 2010, a nice addition that was absent from most of the other submissions.

    For coming in second, MangoMetsFan wins a copy of the Bill James Handbook 2010 (review here) courtesy of ACTA Sports.

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