There Was a Light and It Has Gone Out
Talking about the Mets’ future seems pointless.
The Mets are currently sputtering through another shameful and inglorious season. Their record currently stands at 37–53 — tied for the worst in the National League and the fourth worst in baseball. At 5–21, their June was one of the worst individual months in the history of the franchise.
Typically, in these down years, it’s right around this time that I sit down to write an article begging the team to take a long view of things (I miss the simpler days of #FreeWilmer). This season is lost — if they want to have any chance of contending next year, they need to be practical and decisive in their decision-making. However, year after year, the Mets stubbornly insist to refuse to do the right thing. Last year, the Mets could have taken a good long look at Dominic Smith and Amed Rosario, given Wilmer Flores some run as a starter, and could have eaten salary on their valuable trade chips in order to get a decent prospect return. Instead, they failed to call up Rosario or Smith until August, gave Jose Reyes regular starts over Flores, and refused to eat a penny of the salaries owed to Lucas Duda, Neil Walker, Addison Reed, and others. They have already done the same thing this year, refusing to call up Peter Alonso and by installing Reyes as the regular starter at third base rather than giving run to Smith or to 26 year old Jeff McNeil.
Tonight, I sat down to write this article and take a look at the performance so far this year by Seth Lugo. He’s been fantastic so far — not only has he performed well, with a 2.76 ERA in 58.2 innings, but he has done it in a variety of roles without so much as a complaint. I think the Mets would be best served by giving Lugo a spot in the rotation for the rest of the year and seeing how he does (he is 13–8 with a 4.01 ERA as a starter so far in his career).
But then I thought to myself, what does it matter?
Seriously, what does it matter what the Mets do with Seth Lugo, or anyone else for that matter?
The Mets have no serious path back to contention and we are looking at a mess that, unless there are some incredible strokes of luck, will last several years. Let’s look at the options that are available to the Mets right now:
(1) Try to contend in 2019. The Mets could trade only their pending free agents, open the checkbooks in the offseason, and try to contend in a suddenly very competitive NL East while they still have deGrom and Syndergaard.
(2) Tear it all down. The Mets could do a full rebuild, and trade everything not bolted down. This means that if you are a player with less than four years of control remaining, the Mets are likely trading you for whatever they can get at this deadline or in the offseason.
(3) Try to rebuild on the fly. The Mets could split the difference on the above, trade a few key pieces, and try to be back in the playoff hunt next year or in 2020.
The problem with these approaches is that they are either (i) not available to the Mets, (ii) the Mets are not willing to do them, or (iii) a bad idea.
The Mets are not going to open their checkbooks this offseason for a Manny Machado. And, even if they would, there is only so much rebuilding that you can do in a single offseason through free agency alone. This Mets team is very bad and they have a lot of money already tied up next year in players who are likely to give them little or nothing: Jay Bruce ($14 million), Juan Lagares, ($9 million), Anthony Swarzak ($8 million), Jason Vargas ($8 million), not to mention Yoenis Cespedes ($28 million) and David Wright ($15 million). Therefore, this is an option which is both not available and the Mets would not be willing to do it.
The Mets are not going to be willing to tear it all down, either. History has shown that the Mets have never viewed the total rebuild as a viable option — likely because of where winning 77 games is on the revenue curve compared to winning 60 games. The last time the Mets “rebuilt” they never let themselves get very bad — there was always a Marlon Byrd to be brought in to keep the team from being a total laughingstock. Furthermore, even if the Mets were willing to tear it all down (and they’re not), would you want them to?
Finally, there is the middle road, where they trade one of Syndergaard or deGrom and try to rebuild quickly. This would be a terrible idea. Many people have written extensively about how the Mets continually engage in half-measures in an attempt to remain respectable and sell the maximum amounts of tickets, instead of doing what is in the team’s best interest (I wrote extensively about this with regard to Jay Bruce this past winter). In fact, there was a huge revelation this week in the Bergen Record that the Mets signed Jason Vargas and Jay Bruce over the objection of their analytics department.
So, who cares what they do with Seth Lugo?
So long as they continue to prove that they care more about ticket sales and back pages than they do about winning, who cares what they do at all?
The eternal promise of baseball is that there is always next year. It gives us hope, it renews us, and we are refreshed each day to know that the future is just around the corner and this beautiful sports affords an opportunity for any team to be good if they do things right.
That hope existed from 2002–2004, when we still cared enough to do things like write about Kris Benson. There was reason to believe in July 2004, when I wrote about Jose Reyes, David Wright, some prospect named Scott Kazmir, and how the Mets are “the third richest team in baseball.” That offseason, the team signed Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran.
When the Mets were bad from from 2010–2014, there was a very different tone thanks to the Madoff scandal. But still, we stayed tuned in. We did so, in part, because organization promised us that once fans came back to Citi Field that they would start spending again. We did so, in part, because we were told that these problems would soon be behind us and the Mets would be back to normal soon. As tough as the rebuild was — six years of under .500 baseball — had no reason to believe that those promises were such brazen lies.
But there is no reason to have faith anymore. The light is completely out.
This organization has completely, unequivocally, wasted its championship window, and there is no turnaround on the horizon. This is not the result of bad luck, or an organizational strategy to “build around pitching,” or anything else: it is the result of a mid-market payroll that was spent terribly by meddling owners who prioritize profit over winning. It is the result of a mostly-complacent media that allows the organization to skate by while heaping blame on a first-year manager or a GM who was recently re-diagnosed with cancer. This isn’t a fluke, it is the design, from an organization so tone deaf that Jeff Wilpon literally said last week that the three interim GMs have to run all decisions through him.
People will still show up to the games, because baseball is one of God’s greatest gifts and because it is an indelible part of our lives and relationships with parents, children, best friends, and partners. But make no mistake: the window is closed, and it was closed because of the purposeful failures of the organization. Failing to audition Dom Smith in 2017 resulted with a half-measure at first base in Adrian Gonzalez rather than a real solution. Prioritizing the sale of season tickets prompted the signing of Jay Bruce instead of Lorenzo Cain and Jason Vargas over Jake Arrieta. Manipulation of service time is why Jeff McNeil is hitting .407 in Triple-A instead of in the majors. Foolish risk aversion and disregard of the opinions of baseball professionals brought in AJ Ramos instead of Addison Reed.
So who cares what they do with Seth Lugo? Who cares if they call up Jeff McNeil now or let him leave to become the next Justin Turner? Who cares if the Mets eat money when they trade Jeurys Familia or not? Until the Mets come out and tell us that the process has changed and the baseball professionals are back in charge, nothing will change.
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