"Do you think the Mets will be buyers or sellers at the trade deadline?"
I've been asked this numerous times by NY fans desperate for a Met-amorphosis for their favorite team.
The answer, Met fans, is: No.
Not no, they will be neither. No, that is not the question.
It is not the question because it is a false dichotomy.
Somehow we have alighted on this bent twig of buyers and sellers, as if any team that is not in the playoff chase this season should simply tear itself down and start all over, like it's undressing for bed.
Sell the Free Agents; Keep the Rest
But the Mets are not the Reds, Tigers or White Sox. It is not true that they are doomed to failure for the foreseeable future unless they completely retool. They do not roster star players whose useful years will have passed by the time they next contend.
The Mets have been slowed not so much by poor play this year or lack of talent as by injury. If they can keep their talent on the field, and particularly on the mound, they are eating at the adult table.
The Mets aren't playing for 2017 anymore. They're hopelessly behind in the standings in both the division and Wild Card chase. So they can punt this season. But they need to strengthen themselves for 2018 when they could be a pennant prospect.
Sure, if they can get anything for Curtis Granderson, Lucas Duda, Neal Walker, Addison Reed and Jay Bruce they should go ahead and flip them. Those players are all free agents after this season. Unfortunately, Walker is hobbled, Granderson's tank is empty and Dudas grow on trees. It's hard to see them receiving anything useful in return. Reed and Bruce might generate some return, though the Sandy Alderson would like to re-sign their sterling set-up man/back-up closer.
The Mets are Not Alone
Those kinds of short-term moves make sense, but only if they help the team win next year. The next division winner might very well include the starting staff now in Queens and plenty of the everyday players on the roster.
There are other teams in this situation. The Pirates and Cardinals have sufficient talent to compete next year, with a few tweaks. Neither should jettison every veteran in uniform, the way the Tigers and Royals absolutely must to avoid a decade of obsolescence. If the Blue Jays, Mariners or Rangers conclude that the curtain has likely fallen on their 2017 act, they also need to tiptoe through the trade season.
The point is, it is not simply a matter of choosing between emptying the farm for a late season surge or dumping the veterans with an eye towards 2021. There are plenty of teams that are good enough to win -- next year -- and should try again with the roster they have now, more or less.
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| A newt |
You may have noticed that the Pirates look like a sinking ship. Andrew McCutchen has been turned into a newt. Jeff Locke misses more lunar eclipses than bats. Francisco Liriano, Juan Nicasio and Jon Neise have left a mess on the mound and there's no one to help closer Mark Melancon clean it up. After a 6-20 stretch from May to late June, they're under .500 and so far behind the Cubs they're about to be lapped.
So, the thinking seems to go, management either believes they can win a Wild Card or they're going to sell off parts at the trade deadline.
Talk about a false dichotomy.
Trading away valuable veterans makes sense if your team won't contend until those veterans leave or lose their value. If Pittsburgh brass believes 2016 is a lost cause they might want to unload a player who turns free agent in November. But jettisoning assets from a team that won 98 times last season for future value is the work of a paranoid schizophrenic.
Total Rebuild as Default
We have become so accustomed to the total rebuild that we've lost sight of what a dramatic and desperate act it is. It's tantamount to giving up in hopes of bouncing back twice as strong a few years hence. Which is why it shouldn't be the default position for any franchise, much less one that seems to be in nothing more than a slump.
That's even assuming the Pirates are a lost cause. In fact, they're a fine offensive and defensive team, except for a rotation that's lighting up scoreboards and dragging the team to a 37-40 record. If you're going to suffer the extended scuffling of good players, it might as well be in the element of the game that is most inconsistent under the best of circumstances.
Small Improvement = Wild Card Contender
Indeed, if Bucco hurling improves from fourth worst to middle of the pack in their remaining 85 games, the Pirates could easily make up the 4.5-game gap between them and the Wild Card. With a pitching coach, Ray Searage, considered something of a mound whisperer, and a rotation of hurlers who have achieved success in the past, that is eminently possible. It might even be predictable.
If GM Neal Huntington believes third basemen David Freese and Jung-ho Kang are sufficiently redundant to swap one for a set-up man or a third starter, that's defensible. If he wants to hedge his bets on sacrificing the long-term for a Wild Card charge that might fall short, that's understandable.
If he announces he's flipping the roster for draft picks and Single-A All Stars, I want to see a picture ID, because that's some irrational fan talking, not the savvy team builder who turned the franchise around from the two dark decades that preceded him.
The Pirates have more choices than just buyers or sellers. If the pundits don't know it, I guarantee that the people who run the club do.
