Imagine [Insert Prediction for Mets in 2006 Here], It Isn't Hard To Do
What's up guys, A.F.O.M.G. here. With S.M. heading West this afternoon, blogging duties have fallen to yours truly. Trouble is, I've got a pounding headache lingering from Sippy Momo's sendoff last night (held at official Yankees2000 sponsor, Blondies), and there's just not a hell of a whole lot going on with the Mets or Yankees these days.
That doesn't mean the last few days have been boring, baseball-wise. The Winter Meetings in Dallas have provided a steady diet of rumor, speculation, innuendo, and what have you, but nothing of substance has yet materialized on the Mets' front.
Two of our in-division opponents, the hated Braves and the Nationals, to whom I'm fairly indifferent, have made splashy moves in the past 24 hours, landing Edgar Renteria and Alfonso Soriano, respectively.
These acquisitions affect the Mets, of course. For the Braves, I'd call Renteria a step down from Rafael Furcal, but it's not quite the mammoth quality drop-off that perhaps we'd anticipated. Don't write the Braves off next year, they've still got Tim Hudson and John Smoltz heading up their rotation, and Mike Hampton should be recovered by then.
As for Soriano, whom the Nats will ask to play left field, there's good news and bad news there. A lot of Mets fans are pretty down on Soriano. They argue that his poor fielding and low OBP (.309) suggest that when he's not clubbing home runs, he's not doing a hell of a whole lot to help the team.
It's true he had a Reyes-ian 33 walks last year (and the year before as well -- weird), but it's also true that he consistently hits 30 home runs and drives in 100-ish runs a season.
So the bad news is that the Nationals now have the big bat that they were lacking last year. The good news is that seeing as how the Mets reportedly had interest in Soriano, we didn't have to part with any of our prospects (by which I mean our sole prospect, Lastings Milledge). Regulars at this site know that we're pretty long on old Lastings, so we're not sorry he wasn't shipped off for what could be a 1-year rental.
But as always, Milledge isn't safe. The new rumor with potential Milledge implications concerns A's pitcher Barry Zito. Zito's been a favorite of ours here at Yankees2000 ever since the summer of 2003, when he compared learning, through the media, that he was not going to be starting the All-Star Game for the AL in favor of the supposedly retiring Roger Clemens to finding out in high school, through a friend, that a girl you thought "like-liked you" actually didn't.
Beyond that, however, Zito is a pretty good pitcher, even if he's never quite managed to reach his Cy Young level in the years since he won the award. In our rotation, Zito would slide in between Pedro and Tom "Nina Myers" Glavine to give us a potentially lethal 1-2-3 at the top of our rotation.
As all trade rumors inevitably do, however, the Zito question will come down to Milledge. Is it worth it to trade Milledge for Zito?
You know what, it pains me to say it, but I think it is. And that brings me to the title of this post.
We look at the moves the Mets have made and we start thinking that the Mets will definitely make the playoffs. We're convinced that this is the year we will unseat the Braves as champs of the NL East. Truth is, I think that's probably likely, even if I won't call us the favorites in the NL East outright.
But isn't it just as easy to imagine the Mets falling short again? Aren't we, perhaps, overlooking the question marks surrounding our rotation? We all expect Pedro to be Pedro in 2006, and we just need to keep our fingers crossed that his toe heals properly and that he doesn't sustain a career-threatening injury pitching in the World Baseball Classic. (Can I just say that I hate the idea of him pitching in that thing?)
To my mind, the real leap of faith here is with Glavine. He had a masterful second half of the season, evidently because he learned to throw a curveball. For those keeping count, in three seasons with the Mets, Glavine has had exactly two good stretches: the first half of 2004 and the second half of 2005. The memory of the good Tom Glavine is fresh in our minds, but I'm going to have to wait until May or June to decide whether this guy has really undergone a personal pitching renaissance.
By that point, however, our built-to-win-now (I'm not complaining in any way, incidentally) club could be in serious jeopardy. Kris Benson in a flake who flames out at the end of every season. Jae Seo is still a question mark in my opinion, I don't care what he did last year. Steve Trachsel was uneven after his return from major back surgery in 2005, but you can probably count on the standard .500 season from him by this point. And Victor Zambrano sucks.
Aaron Heilman could find himself in the rotation if one of those guys sputters, but then what happens to our already suspect bullpen? Roberto Hernandez will not be back, so right now our bullpen consists of Billy Wagner, Heilman, and a bunch of unknown quantities, some of whom have fared better than others in their limited time in the Show. Juan Padilla looked good, Heath Bell looked horrible. Right now we're sort of keeping our fingers crossed on the bullpen.
All of which is to say, it's easy enough to see this team being dogged by shoddy pitching. As some ESPN broadcaster said before the 2002 season, "This Mets team [short pause for effect], will score runs". That may actually be true about these 2006 Mets. Will the pitching be there? It certainly could be, but it's easy to imagine it won't be, if you try.
And that brings us back to Zito. Look at this Mets team. Look at the players we have. Look at their ages. We are built to win right now, so we might as well go for broke. Going for broke makes sense when there's a piece that you need (another front line starter) rather than just another attractive piece that would be nice (another big bat, say, Manny Ramirez).
If we got Zito and found another arm or two for the 'pen, then I'd start calling us the favorites in the NL East. I'd probably call us the favorites in the National League. Until that happens, though, our pitching isn't nearly as rock solid as we all like to think it is, and it's not just in the bullpen that this is the case.
I'm not merely trying to play devil's advocate. True, I think the Mets will make the playoffs in 2006, I said so myself. But it doesn't take a great stretch of imagination to see problems on the horizon, problems that aren't of the "Billy Wagner's arm falls off" variety.
Of course, what probably makes the most sense would be for the Mets to look to improve their bullpen, go into 2006 with essentially the starting rotation listed earlier, and see what we've got. A starting pitcher will likely be available at the trading deadline, and that pitcher could well be Zito.
But as much as it pains me to say it, I think if a deal centering around Milledge for Zito is floated, Omar should try and make it work. Zito's a young Cy Young award winning pitcher with an awesome head of hair. I say we make our move. Milledge and Heilman? That's too much.
Best of luck to you Sippy Momo. Won't be the same without you, pal.
Sippy Momo's out by the bay.
Imagine that.
A.F.O.M.G.
That doesn't mean the last few days have been boring, baseball-wise. The Winter Meetings in Dallas have provided a steady diet of rumor, speculation, innuendo, and what have you, but nothing of substance has yet materialized on the Mets' front.
Two of our in-division opponents, the hated Braves and the Nationals, to whom I'm fairly indifferent, have made splashy moves in the past 24 hours, landing Edgar Renteria and Alfonso Soriano, respectively.
These acquisitions affect the Mets, of course. For the Braves, I'd call Renteria a step down from Rafael Furcal, but it's not quite the mammoth quality drop-off that perhaps we'd anticipated. Don't write the Braves off next year, they've still got Tim Hudson and John Smoltz heading up their rotation, and Mike Hampton should be recovered by then.
As for Soriano, whom the Nats will ask to play left field, there's good news and bad news there. A lot of Mets fans are pretty down on Soriano. They argue that his poor fielding and low OBP (.309) suggest that when he's not clubbing home runs, he's not doing a hell of a whole lot to help the team.
It's true he had a Reyes-ian 33 walks last year (and the year before as well -- weird), but it's also true that he consistently hits 30 home runs and drives in 100-ish runs a season.
So the bad news is that the Nationals now have the big bat that they were lacking last year. The good news is that seeing as how the Mets reportedly had interest in Soriano, we didn't have to part with any of our prospects (by which I mean our sole prospect, Lastings Milledge). Regulars at this site know that we're pretty long on old Lastings, so we're not sorry he wasn't shipped off for what could be a 1-year rental.
But as always, Milledge isn't safe. The new rumor with potential Milledge implications concerns A's pitcher Barry Zito. Zito's been a favorite of ours here at Yankees2000 ever since the summer of 2003, when he compared learning, through the media, that he was not going to be starting the All-Star Game for the AL in favor of the supposedly retiring Roger Clemens to finding out in high school, through a friend, that a girl you thought "like-liked you" actually didn't.
Beyond that, however, Zito is a pretty good pitcher, even if he's never quite managed to reach his Cy Young level in the years since he won the award. In our rotation, Zito would slide in between Pedro and Tom "Nina Myers" Glavine to give us a potentially lethal 1-2-3 at the top of our rotation.
As all trade rumors inevitably do, however, the Zito question will come down to Milledge. Is it worth it to trade Milledge for Zito?
You know what, it pains me to say it, but I think it is. And that brings me to the title of this post.
We look at the moves the Mets have made and we start thinking that the Mets will definitely make the playoffs. We're convinced that this is the year we will unseat the Braves as champs of the NL East. Truth is, I think that's probably likely, even if I won't call us the favorites in the NL East outright.
But isn't it just as easy to imagine the Mets falling short again? Aren't we, perhaps, overlooking the question marks surrounding our rotation? We all expect Pedro to be Pedro in 2006, and we just need to keep our fingers crossed that his toe heals properly and that he doesn't sustain a career-threatening injury pitching in the World Baseball Classic. (Can I just say that I hate the idea of him pitching in that thing?)
To my mind, the real leap of faith here is with Glavine. He had a masterful second half of the season, evidently because he learned to throw a curveball. For those keeping count, in three seasons with the Mets, Glavine has had exactly two good stretches: the first half of 2004 and the second half of 2005. The memory of the good Tom Glavine is fresh in our minds, but I'm going to have to wait until May or June to decide whether this guy has really undergone a personal pitching renaissance.
By that point, however, our built-to-win-now (I'm not complaining in any way, incidentally) club could be in serious jeopardy. Kris Benson in a flake who flames out at the end of every season. Jae Seo is still a question mark in my opinion, I don't care what he did last year. Steve Trachsel was uneven after his return from major back surgery in 2005, but you can probably count on the standard .500 season from him by this point. And Victor Zambrano sucks.
Aaron Heilman could find himself in the rotation if one of those guys sputters, but then what happens to our already suspect bullpen? Roberto Hernandez will not be back, so right now our bullpen consists of Billy Wagner, Heilman, and a bunch of unknown quantities, some of whom have fared better than others in their limited time in the Show. Juan Padilla looked good, Heath Bell looked horrible. Right now we're sort of keeping our fingers crossed on the bullpen.
All of which is to say, it's easy enough to see this team being dogged by shoddy pitching. As some ESPN broadcaster said before the 2002 season, "This Mets team [short pause for effect], will score runs". That may actually be true about these 2006 Mets. Will the pitching be there? It certainly could be, but it's easy to imagine it won't be, if you try.
And that brings us back to Zito. Look at this Mets team. Look at the players we have. Look at their ages. We are built to win right now, so we might as well go for broke. Going for broke makes sense when there's a piece that you need (another front line starter) rather than just another attractive piece that would be nice (another big bat, say, Manny Ramirez).
If we got Zito and found another arm or two for the 'pen, then I'd start calling us the favorites in the NL East. I'd probably call us the favorites in the National League. Until that happens, though, our pitching isn't nearly as rock solid as we all like to think it is, and it's not just in the bullpen that this is the case.
I'm not merely trying to play devil's advocate. True, I think the Mets will make the playoffs in 2006, I said so myself. But it doesn't take a great stretch of imagination to see problems on the horizon, problems that aren't of the "Billy Wagner's arm falls off" variety.
Of course, what probably makes the most sense would be for the Mets to look to improve their bullpen, go into 2006 with essentially the starting rotation listed earlier, and see what we've got. A starting pitcher will likely be available at the trading deadline, and that pitcher could well be Zito.
But as much as it pains me to say it, I think if a deal centering around Milledge for Zito is floated, Omar should try and make it work. Zito's a young Cy Young award winning pitcher with an awesome head of hair. I say we make our move. Milledge and Heilman? That's too much.
Best of luck to you Sippy Momo. Won't be the same without you, pal.
Sippy Momo's out by the bay.
Imagine that.
A.F.O.M.G.
posted by Sippy Momo at 12:13 PM
3 Comments:
Yo bro:
Here's the trouble with trading for Zito (via Gammons): He's a free agent after next season, so we'd have to get an extension to make it worthwhile. Burnett, who's older and considerably worse, got a 5 years, 55 mil from Toronto. What does that mean that Zito would demand? Are you willing to take him for 5 years at 14 mil a season? It's a tougher call, since if he's not dealt, we can go after him next summer (or one of the other premier starters who'll hit the market, and all be younger than Burnett, incidentally: Garland and Mulder). Would Pedro get pissy if he's not the highest paid pitcher on the club?
Food for thought.
Oh, and also, about Soriano and Renteria: not sweatin' it. Braves gave up maybe the top 3b prospect in the game, and all because Chipper wouldn't move again. Renteria will predictably experience a resurgence with the Braves, much to our dismay, but at least they gave up a lot -- imagine how pissed we'd be if Lastings went for Renteria. That's what happened.
Also, Soriano's a great player, but notice that he's a 2b. The Nats have a guy named Vidro who likes that position, and Soriano wouldn't accept a position change in TX, so we'll see what happens. Also, Texas is the best hitters park in the game, and DC is the worst -- and they have a much worse lineup to boot (no more protection and batting with the likes of Blalock, Young, and Texiera aka the best-young-power hitter-in-the-game-not-named-Pujols on base).
I haven't read anything from Gammons about this that I can recall, but to be honest I'd be willing to pony up the dough for Zito. Remember that Glavine's contract comes off the books at the end of 2006. That's somewhere in the area of 11 mil cleared up right there. Who better to replace Glavine than Zito?
I should have made it clear, however, that a trade for Zito would be crazy if we didn't immediately negotiate a long-term deal. I don't want another one-year rental like Mike Hampton (Although here's a nice fun fact for you -- when Hampton signed with the Rockies, the Mets received a first-round draft pick in return. The player they selected with that pick? David Wright.)
I've been tossing over the idea of trading Milledge since I wrote the piece yesterday. I really want the kid to make it to the Show with the Mets. I can't shake the feeling though that Zito's the kind of chip worth trading a prospect like Milledge for.
As for Soriano and Renteria, fair points.
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