Baseball Preview, Part 2: The Mets

Meet the Mess, meet the Debts, step right up and meet the Mets…

The New York Mets will not be good in 2011. Sorry Met fans. It’s just reality. Actually, most Met fans already know this. It's no secret, as Marty Balin would say. …I am picking the Mets to finish dead last in the National League East, behind even the Washington Nationals. The reasons for this gloomy prediction are many, but let’s start with the dark cloud of the Madoff affair and how it’s likely to affect the ongoing operation of the ballclub. The trustee and lawyer in charge of the class action suit seeking to recover losses for the victims of the Madoff Ponzi scheme, one Irving Picard, is suing the Wilpon family for about $1 billion. That’s billion, with a B. Picard alleges that Sterling Properties, the Wilpon family’s commercial real estate entity that owns the Mets and the SNY cable network, actually made money on the Madoff scheme and either knew or should have known that something was fishy with Madoff’s methods. A number of damaging details regarding the Wilpons’ relationship to Madoff have emerged, not the least of which is that Saul Katz, a close business associate of the Wilpons and a partner in their ownership of the Mets, took an active role in attracting new investors for Madoff. Could Katz have been doing this without very specific knowledge of the means by which Madoff was consistently winning outsized gains, even in down markets? I highly doubt it. My guess is that Katz knew, and the Wilpons knew as well. I think the class action suit has legitimacy. But what does this have to do with baseball you ask? The Wilpons had reportedly been using proceeds from their Madoff investment to fund daily baseball operations, and they are now struggling to finance debt associated with their ownership of the Mets. The family has put a minority stake in the team up for sale, and they have recently had to borrow $25 million from MLB to cover shortfalls, so it wouldn’t be a shock to me if they have to sell the team outright, especially since they’re reportedly having trouble finding new lenders. One hopes they won’t try to hang on, which would be to the detriment of the ballclub and its loyal fans. And if they do try to hang on, then MLB should do the right thing and seize ownership of the team until a more financially viable owner or ownership group steps up to buy the team. Bud Selig is supposedly close to Fred Wilpon, which I pray won’t cloud his judgment or the aggressiveness with which he might have to push his friend to sell. Baseball is like religion in New York City. If run properly, instead of with flim-flam leveraged paper wealth, the Mets can be a huge money maker again. I can’t imagine it will be too hard to find a qualified and enthusiastic buyer.

Ownership’s involvement with Madoff is one of the reasons the Mets were so inactive in the offseason in terms of acquiring quality players. The organization sacked GM Omar Minaya, as well they should have, and replaced him with Sandy Alderson, who then hired his loyal lieutenants, Paul DePodesta and JP Ricardi. But the new brain trust managed to do nothing much more than pick up inexpensive journeymen pitchers from the scrap heap, some of whom are coming back from protracted injuries and surgeries. ...Along with the Madoff affair, a second reason the new Front Office didn’t do much in the offseason is that the club still has five very bad contracts on their books left over from Minaya’s reign as GM. Lefty Oliver Perez is owed $12 Million this year, but he does not figure to make the team out of spring training, not even as a middle reliever/mop-up guy. Luis Castillo, the 35-year-old washed-up second baseman, is owed $6 million this year and is also unlikely to make the trip north when the team breaks camp. Carlos Beltran, now 34 with diminished skills after knee surgery, is owed $18 million this year. Lefty Johan Santana, whose velocity was already down from his peak years with the Minnesota Twins, is still recovering from shoulder surgery. He is owed 22.5 million this year but is not expected to pitch again until at least July. And while righty head case Francisco Rodriguez is still an excellent closer, he is owed $11.5 million this year. And if K-Rod finishes 55 games this season, a clause in his contract will pay him a staggering $17.5 million to close games for the Mets in 2012. Omar's ghost will be haunting the Mets clubhouse for quite some time...

On a team with a payroll of $126.5 million for 2011, well over half of those dollars are tied up in these five players. What’s worse, only Beltran and Rodriguez can be realistically viewed at this point as players who’ll be useful to the Mets, both on the field and hopefully in trades that would help the team re-stock its depleted farm system. But the Mets will not be able to trade K-Rod, I don’t think, without assuming a sizable chunk of his salary. The good news is that Beltran will have every incentive to play well and win one final good contract, and only Santana and maybe K-Rod will remain on the books after this season. The bad news is that that Beltran, Castillo, Perez, Santana and Rodriguez are all still on the books right now, and the combined weight of their contracts and the looming financial damage from Madoff lawsuit has kept the Mets mostly on the sidelines during the offseason. The whole situation is a mess. A big fucking mess.

But they have to play the games, and this year the Mets will be going to battle with a new skipper at the helm, the great Terry Collins. Or maybe not so great. I remember Collins from his days managing the Angels, a position from which he was forced to resign in 1999 after several key players, including Mo Vaughn and Jim Edmonds, staged a clubhouse mutiny. It was ugly stuff. Over six seasons of managing the Houston Astros and the Angels, Collins has compiled a record of 444 – 434, a winning record, just barely (he's also managed in Japan). Collins is very intense and has a raging temper, kind of in the same vein as Larry Bowa. We’ll see how his style flies with multi millionaires like Beltran, Wright, Bay and Reyes...

I’m not fully sold on the club's new stat-based Front Office, though I agree with their approach to the 2011 Mets, viewing the season as a bridge year in which they’ll see what they have and start making plans for the future. And in spite of all the shit surrounding the team and the organization right now, the Mets have some compelling pieces. If nothing else, there’ll undoubtedly be some interesting things happening on and off the field in 2011. Let’s take a look at the on-field “product”…

At first base, Ike Davis will be coming back after an encouraging rookie season in which he fielded well and produced a 264/.351/.440 line with the bat, including 19 HRs, 71 and RBI. Davis strikes out a lot and has a tendency to act like a little bitch when he gets wrung up by a plate umpire, but he’s learning and played to a 2.5 WAR in 2010. He figures to be a big left handed stick in the middle of the Mets’ lineup for years to come… The team’s two most valuable players at this point are on the left side of the infield. Third baseman David Wright’s batting average was down more than 20 points last year, but he hit 29 bombs, drove in 103 runs, and yielded almost 4 WAR. He’s very solid defensively, plays the game the right way, and is just someone you root for because he seems like such a good guy. It’s a shame to see his peak years getting pissed away with such a train wreck of a team… When healthy, Jose Reyes is one of the most electrifying players in the game, a rare five-tool shortstop whose speed might make you think of him as an ideal leadoff hitter, except that he’s a bit of a free swinger, strikes out more than he should, and has a just-ok career OBP of .335 over eight seasons. Still, he steals bases (a maligned skill among the new stat intelligentsia), hits for some power, and has an unbelievably live arm from the hole at shortstop. The biggest issue for Reyes is that he’s somewhat brittle and has spent a fair bit of time on the DL over his career. He’s a lot of fun to watch when he’s not on the mend…Second base will be a black hole for the Mets in 2011. Luis Castillo will hopefully get his walking papers before the end of spring training, leaving Daniel Murphy, Ruben Tejada, Brad Emaus and Luis Hernandez to compete for the opening. [editor's note: As we go to press, Castillo has at long last been released. Fare thee well, Luis. Have fun spending all that money you'll be getting paid for doing absolutely nothing.] Personally, I’d like to see Murph and Tejada split the second base duties, but it looks like Hernandez will begin the season as the everyday guy. His career offensive numbers (.250/.298/.409) are ho-hum, at best… Along with Ike Davis, catcher Josh Thole is one of the team’s talented young players. He reminds me a little of a young Jason Kendall, only not as skuzzy. Unlike Kendall, Thole bats from the left side, but both are slap hitting gritty catchers, and Thole can even yank one out of the yard on occasion. He also handles pitchers well and plays solid defense. Thole will get the bulk of the playing time behind the plate, with Ronny Paulino playing Duffy Dyer to Thole’s Jerry Grote…

The opening day outfield will feature Angel Pagan in center, Jason Bay in left and Carlos Beltran in right. Pagan had a decent year last season (.285/.335/.435, 11HRs, 69 RBI, 4.8 WAR (!)). He cut down on the mental mistakes, played hard, and became a quiet team leader. He’ll be key to any success the Mets have this year…Bay struggled to find his footing in New York last season before a collision with the leftfield wall at Dodgers Stadium shelved him for the remainder of 2010. But nobody plays the game harder than he does. He’s a gamer when he’s right, and I’m pulling for him to have a bounce-back year. …Beltran is not nearly the player he was just a few years ago, but he’s a savvy, switch hitting veteran. The Carlos Beltran era in Queens is drawing to a close. The best the fans can hope for is that he plays well enough to garner some decent trade value before he walks at the end of the season.

The weakest link for the Mets, a team with a lot of them, is the pitching, both in the starting rotation and the bullpen. The top 3 starters are not bad. Mike Pelfrey had his best year in 2010, going 15-9 with a 3.66 ERA, but was 10-2 going into June and then regressed to the mean. Knuckleballer R.A. Dickey is my favorite player on the team. He transformed himself from a power arm to a knuckleballer after his career appeared to be in the toilet, and then last year, after getting sent down to the minors during spring training, he fought his way back onto the team and became one of the rotation’s most reliable arms (11-9, 2.84 ERA). On top of all this, he’s an eccentric southerner who reads books in the bullpen on his days off and likes to quote Faulkner in interviews with the beat writers. Armed with his knuckler – which he throws harder than most, sometimes up into the 80s – Dickey’s career may only just be getting started at age 36… Lefty Jonathon Niese had a better rookie year than his numbers suggest (9-10, 4.20 ERA). He doesn’t throw hard by today’s standards, but he’s got a nasty cutter and a lot of upside.

After Pelfrey, Dickey and Niese, Met fans should pray for rain. Chris Young, the likely number 4, has pitched in 18 games over the last two seasons. Who knows what we’ll be getting. Chris Capuano will anchor the staff. He’s 32 and has had Tommy John surgery, twice. Don’t expect a lot, even though he was once a solid pitcher for the Brewers.

The bullpen will be a fingers crossed kind of thing. K-Rod is the closer. One of the compelling stories for the Mets in 2011 will be whether the club tries to prevent him from reaching the 55 completed games he needs in order for his $17.5 million kicker to activate. The Players’ Association will undoubtedly be monitoring the situation very closely…The Mets lost a lot of bullpen arms in the offseason – Pedro Feliciano, Hisanori Takahashi, Elmer Dessens, Fernando Nieve, and Raul Valdes are all gone…Bobby Parnell will be back and is likely to be the set-up man for K-Rod. Parnell looks to me like a closer in waiting and has already lit up the gun at 103 MPH. I like his demeanor on the mound and I’m rooting for him to succeed. …Manny Acosta, picked up from the Atlanta Braves, will be another power arm in the pen….Journeyman DJ Carrasco, 34, was picked up cheaply off the junk pile and will be a middle reliever, and Taylor Bucholz, with one of the best curve balls I’ve ever seen, will try to reassert himself in 2011 as a major league caliber pitcher. …Like I said, keep your fingers crossed when the Mets have a lead and you see Terry Collins signaling for the bullpen.

It's not unlikely that the instability of the ownership situation will force the Mets to hold a fire sale before the end of the 2011 season. Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran will both probably be dealt by the trading deadline. But it may not end there. Jason Bay could be traded, David Wright could be traded, and even K-Rod could be traded, provided the team is willing to assume some of his remaining salary. A house cleaning would not be the worst thing in the world. I like the idea of the Mets going with a nuclear option, torching the whole thing to the ground, and starting from scratch. They are probably 3 to 5 years away from being good anyway, and trading high-octane players now is a good way to get a head start on building for the future. I would welcome being able to see what some of the younger players can do at the Major League level, guys like Lucas Duda, with his Dave Kingmanesque power; Fernando Martinez, who always seems to be the next big thing but never gets enough playing time to adequately demonstrate his talents; and Jerry Meijia, with his lightning-fast heater. As much as I hate watching the Mets lose, this is the scenario I’m hoping for in 2011. I predict the team will finish 70-92, good enough for last place in their division. It’s gonna be a long summer in Queens, but the situation at the top of the organization is fluid, and maybe we’re now in a bottoming-out phase, the lowest low point immediately preceding a new period of ascendancy...