BOSTON -- A day before the latest bit of Mets insanity leaked out -- we'll get to that in a moment -- a longtime executive talked about the extraordinary opportunity the team possessed in 2018 to completely reset and position themselves as a National League powerhouse for many seasons to come.
If you recall, it was mostly a long, terrible summer last year. The New York Mets were out of contention by midseason, and the team announced that Sandy Alderson was taking a step back as he went through cancer treatment, although folks within the organization understood that this was just a backdoor method of firing the longtime general manager.
In the midst of all this, Jacob deGrom became the best pitcher in baseball, having one of the best seasons for any starter ever, and there was discussion within the Mets' organization about cashing in deGrom and other valuable trade chips and remaking the team. The value of deGrom, who had just turned 30, would never be higher than in the middle of the 2018 pennant race, and he would have fetched a boatload of prospects. His value was so high that his agent at the time, Brodie Van Wagenen, would use the inherent leverage to issue a "pay him or trade him" demand.
Because the Mets never even went through the serious exercise of listening to trade offers, it's hard to know exactly what return they would have gotten. But as the executive mused, imagine if there had been an aggressive sell-off: deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and others would have netted the best of the Padres', Dodgers', Braves' or Astros' prospects in an aggressive sell-off. The Mets might have had the likes of Chris Paddack or Gavin Lux and three or four others added to the team's best minor leaguers, Jarred Kelenic and Justin Dunn.
They would have possessed that exceptional core of young and cheap talent, augmented by the surprising and explosive emergence of Pete Alonso and Jeff McNeil. The savvy Mets fan base would have understood the rebuilding strategy and bought in to an exciting generation of talent, and we know this because there is no more loyal species than the Mets fan. The team would not have contended in 2019, but through these deals and some deferred gratification, they might have been a club to fear starting in 2020 and beyond.
Alas.
Instead, the Mets pursued the fantasy that they could contend with one or two flashy changes.
At a time when the rest of the industry trends younger, the Mets got older last winter, making a gaudy, expensive trade for 36-year-old Robinson Cano and closer Edwin Diaz. Usually, when a team takes on a salary dump like Cano, they add prospects, but somehow, the Mets gave up the best minor leaguers in the deal, Kelenic and Dunn, who are thriving in the Mariners' farm system. The Mets bestowed a two-year deal on the oft-injured 35-year-old Jed Lowrie, whose next at-bat will be his first for the franchise, and they signed 31-year-old catcher Wilson Ramos.
Van Wagenen is now the Mets' GM, and he runs one of the worst teams in baseball -- not as bad as the Tigers and Orioles, but certainly near the bottom of the National League. And moving forward, they will have holes in the big leagues at catcher, shortstop, third base (until McNeil is assigned that spot), center field and at least two-fifths of the rotation. Their bullpen has been a big problem area, including the talented but frazzled Diaz.
You can understand why the Mets would now consider a reset, because it's clearly not happening for them this year or next year. Cano turns 37 in October, and there's no rational reason to expect he's going to bounce back from his struggles and be better in 2020. It would make sense for them to trade Syndergaard and Diaz, to get young, cheap major-league-ready prospects in return. The great sell-off opportunity of 2018 was squandered, but they could still do OK in forming a young anchor of players to build around, especially now that Alonso and McNeil surprised everybody, including the Mets' leadership.
But that's not what they're doing. Their dream discussions are to trade Syndergaard and Diaz in a dizzying flurry of moves, and net a win-now piece like Marcus Stroman of the Blue Jays.
Which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Whatever price they would pay for Stroman or a Mike Minor or a Robbie Ray is rooted in the fact that each of those pitchers would help their next team for two pennant races -- 2019 and 2020, before they reach free agency.
For the Mets, that means value squandered immediately, because they aren't contending this year. Paying the current trade price for Stroman would be like signing on to the yearly rate for a rental in January while knowing you can't move into the place until July.
Trading away Syndergaard and then dealing for Stroman would be flipping a younger pitcher who won't be a free agent until 2021 for an older pitcher who is a year closer to hitting the open market.
The thinking behind a series of moves like that is bizarre. But that's where the Mets are right now, living out a continued delusion that nobody understands except their leadership, and sinking deeper into a hole that may, in the end, require another regime change and years of extraction.
It's mind-boggling, and for Major League Baseball, it's a growing problem, because the industry would be well-served if the Mets were the smoothly operated powerhouse that they should be.
News from around the major leagues
Chris Sale starts for the Boston Red Sox on Sunday Night Baseball and has the chance to finish off a four-game sweep of the New York Yankees. His stuff has been better of late, sharper, but through the course of the season, the Red Sox have lost 13 of his 21 starts, and through his most challenging season, Sale has been bluntly critical of himself.
"If I stink," Sale said Saturday, sitting in the Red Sox dugout, "I'm going to tell you."
His coaches in high school and college were demanding, he recalled, identifying mistakes on days when he shut down opposing hitters. If he threw a one-hitter in the years in which he was dominant, he said, he would get a text from his father asking about that one hit. Sale says that when he was younger, it felt like that kind of feedback was hypercritical, but he came to understand and adopt that mentality for himself. And if a starting pitcher allows four or five runs in 4⅓ innings and talks about how he felt like he threw the ball fine, Sale understands why fans wouldn't want to hear that.
"No one is saying anything about me that's worse than what I'm saying about myself," Sale said. "Trust me, I wish I didn't have to say it ... I'm a grown-up, and I can take [the criticism]."
Sale's slider has been good most of the season, but a lot of his troubles have been rooted in his fastball. But he believes his fastball command has improved in recent starts.
• Orioles center fielder Stevie Wilkerson earned the first save ever for a position player the other day with an unusual approach. Rather than relive high school days and throw hard, Wilkerson slowed down his stuff, to as low as 52 mph, flipping in nothing balls -- just batting practice with an arc. He faced three hitters and retired them all, including future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols, with the batters clearly struggling to cope with the diminished velocity.
This could be a great teaching moment for pitchers around baseball.
"You don't think we've been talking about it?" asked Sale, who predicted that next spring training, you'll see some starters and relievers flipping in curveballs at 52 mph. Upon seeing a position player fare as well as Wilkerson did merely by reducing his velocity, Sale joked, "That's a bad look for pitchers."
• Domingo German starts for the Yankees on Sunday night, in the 31st start of his career. Last year, he followed a lot of his peers and took some time to step through the door and into the dark room at the base of the Green Monster, peering at the many, many signatures on the walls. "It was like going into a time machine, seeing the signatures of people from many years before," he said through an interpreter.
The other day, he took teammate Nestor Cortes Jr. into the Green Monster, intending to show him where he signed last year -- but amid so many signatures, he could not find his own.
• During Saturday's blowout loss to the Red Sox, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman watched the game in the visiting manager's office at Fenway Park, where he could more readily field trade calls. This is the first year of the new, cemented July 31 trade deadline, and teams can no longer defer the decision about adding pitching help in August, the way the Astros did a couple of years ago when they traded for Justin Verlander.
A little more than 72 hours remain before the deadline, and some of Cashman's peers believe there may be more pressure on Cashman than any GM in baseball, considering how good the team is -- and how badly beaten up the rotation is. In the past seven games, the Yankees' starters have combined for 26 innings, fewer than four innings per start. The Yankees have talked extensively about Cleveland's Trevor Bauer, an innings-eater; Stroman, a native New Yorker who might thrive on the Yankee Stadium stage; and Arizona's Robbie Ray, who has the swing-and-miss capability that Cashman has always valued. There may be others.
But with James Paxton struggling, Masahiro Tanaka getting beaten up by the Red Sox and CC Sabathia nearing the end of his career, the Yankees need help immediately.
• The San Diego Padres moved Francisco Mejia to left field Saturday to get him some playing time, and as Dennis Lin reported, Andy Green expects him to continue to work on his catching. At the time that Mejia was traded in the Brad Hand deal last summer, some rival evaluators believed that Mejia's long-term future could not be at catcher because of defensive challenges, and thought that Cleveland moved him at exactly the right time. Catching metrics can be sketchy, but Mejia's small sample size for this year behind the plate matches the eye test of some scouts.
Mejia is playing behind Austin Hedges, who is regarded as an elite defender and has a .661 OPS in his first 46 games this year.
• The Atlanta Braves have been digging deep through pitching options on the trade market, but part of their assessment will be about how their own rotation is developing -- with Kevin Gausman making his second start off the injured list and Max Fried coming back from what the Braves see as a minor blister issue. The Braves have talked to many teams about pitching, including the Mets, who have Zack Wheeler, among other options.
Baseball Tonight Podcast
Friday: Karl Ravech talks about the career of Troy Tulowitzki, the first save for any position player in history, and the Mets' intention to move Syndergaard; Jessica Mendoza talks about the contract situation for J.D. Martinez; Rena Wang and bleacher tweets.
Thursday: A conversation with Nelson Cruz; Keith Law on the lineup card confusion in Tampa Bay; Sarah Langs ranks baseball's top 10 pitches among starting pitchers, from deGrom's fastball to Max Scherzer's slider to a piece of Verlander's repertoire.
Wednesday: David Schoenfield reviews what was the best day of action in baseball; Paul Hembekides brings some numbers and some history.
Tuesday: Dave Mellor, the head of grounds at Fenway Park, talks about his new book and his fight against PTSD; Bob Nightengale discusses the Giants' remarkable turnaround; Langs plays The Numbers Game.
Monday: The Hall of Fame speeches, including two of the most touching; a conversation with Braves All-Star Freddie Freeman; Tim Kurkjian discusses Matt Harvey's fall from grace; Todd Radom, the weekly quiz, and cap talk.