16
2011
Cliff Lee Underpaid, D.J. Carrasco Overpaid? That’s Why I Say Heyman Nice Shot.
An article by Craig Lerner
Jon Heyman of SI.com totally infuriates me at times with the joy he seems to get out of taking potshots at the Mets. Some of you may think I’m overreacting, but he does this incessantly 2-3 times a week. However, this one takes the cake as I’m sure you will all agree.
Before the weekend, Heyman posted a list of his most overpaid and underpaid free agents this offseason. It sounded like a good read, and I expected to read the obvious, but man was I wrong.
Listed among his overpaid players I see the name of D.J. Carrasco – Mets. He writes,
D.J. Carrasco: $2.5 million, 2 years, Mets. If they think he’s going to replace Pedro Feliciano and Hisanori Takahashi, they have another thing coming. Couldn’t this money have been better spent on a starter with upside? And two years? For him?
What does that even mean? Carrasco is a right-handed pitcher, how could Heyman possibly think he was intended to be a replacement for southpaws Takahashi or Feliciano? Hey, I’m not defending this signing, in fact I’m not even sure I like Carrasco myself, but this just seemed like a very ridiculous argument for Heyman to make.
Considering that the Mets had not paid more than $1.5MM for any players this offseason, I never expected to see any Met listed as “overpaid”. The fact that he included him seemed more like his way of taking another jab at the team he loves to kill.
Noticeably absent from his list was none other than the highest paid reliever in baseball, Rafael Soriano who will get paid 3/$36MM to be the bridge to Mariano Rivera, who just signed a two-year deal himself this offseason.
That is an obscene amount to pay for any setup man, and for Heyman to not include him among his list of overpaid players shows an acute bias against the Mets and an undiscerning fondness for the Yankees. Pure unobjectivity at its best.
Furthermore, as I kept reading, I find that he included Cliff Lee, now of the Phillies, as one of the most underpaid free agents this offseason. Really???
Given the overwhelming fact that Cliff Lee is now the highest compensated pitcher in all of baseball, undeservedly so I might add, how can he possibly be considered underpaid?
If you want to say he’s worth it and leave him off your overpaid/underpaid list entirely, that’s fine. But to include the highest paid pitcher in the game in your underpaid list is just an insult to our judgment. How many more tens of millions would it have taken for Cliff Lee to have gotten a fair deal in Heyman’s estimation? Ten million? Twenty million? Fifty million? Can anyone else spot the absurdity in that?
That’s why I say, Heyman, nice shot.
About the Author: Craig Lerner
I'm a data analyst and researcher for a leading news agency who loves life and is hooked on the Mets. I love following the Amateur Draft and have a particular fondness for the Mets Minor Leagues who I follow each day. Give me a cold beer, a summer day, and a Mets game, and I'm good to go.
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Well Mr author, since your hapless metsies and theiir out of touch gm has replaced the two departd excellent releif pitchers with only Mr DJ, Heyman is exactly on target. The guy was a mop up man for the worst pen in baseball and that’s what your mr out of date got and he let two fine guys go. obviously he didn’t knwo that MR dj wasn’t a lefty. all he cared about was price. and he proved himself a total liar since he won’t talk to any good players about a deal past 2011 but he sdigns mr mop up man for two years…… heyman gets it, you are too in lvoe with your of date out of touch gm to see the picture. here’s to the mets in the cellar the rest of the decade…… but you’ll all be happy little metsies knowing that the wilpons didn’t spend too much anymore.!!!
Why dont you go trolling on another Mets site? Your act is wearing thin here and nobody really cares about what you think anyway. Dont you Philthies fans have anything better to do?
John Heyman is a complete boob. He never EVER gets a story right , let alone first. He tells us what we could read any where. It is hard to understand him sometimes because is nose is so far up Francs-Fatso’s butt.
It’s not a coincidence that he praises the Yankees and Phillies no matter what they do, but even when theres nothing to knock the Mets for he somehow finds any knife he can to twist in our backs. The guy is a hack and the only writer I know that blocks people on his twitter just for disagreeing with him. You may want to check your own twitter because as soon as he sniffs this piece out I’m sure you’ll be cutoff for good.
Heyman’s an idiot, the guy’s a clown. What I dont get is why he hates the Mets so much and yet he’s always on SNY as a guest and he must be on WFAN at least twice a week. He only gets about 10% of his rumors right so he’s not even good at that. If youre gonna take the time to make list like this one, at least put some real thought into it. Cool vid btw.
Craig you’re going to see that many of the so-called writers in the know have a bias no matter how intensly they deny it. Heyman, Rosenthal, Matthews….one in the same. Good article Craig.
I always thought Heyman was a Mets guy but he makes a lot of wise remarks because he doesn’t like a lot of their moves or the way they operate. That’s how I take it.
What’s the league min $400.000.00?
DJ got what a base of $1.2M a yr?
What point above $400.000.00 did the signing become then overpaid you think in Heyman’s opinion?
Was a base of 800k OK?
So lets say that anything above league min was overpaying and that is sliding the scale all the way in Heyman’s favor. The Mets overpaid in Heyman’s eyes by $700.000.00 a yr?
OK now that that’s settled does anyone really care that a reporter feels they overpaid by $700.000.00 a yr?
I sure don’t.
Change that $700.000.00 a yr to $800.000.00 a yr.
Oh, c’mon… Heyman is right on the money. The bottom feeding Mets remind me of a housewife who only shops at Dollar stores. The Yanks and the Phillies spend money because the think they owe the fans something. The Wilpons hired Alderson to morph the Mets into a medium market team that has a payroll of 80 to 100 million per season. Watch… I’ll be proved right after the ’11 season. By the way, I’ve been a Mets fan since Day one in April of 1962.
Another one that just doesn’t get it.
“By the way, I’ve been a Mets fan since Day one in April of 1962.”
What does that mean?
Does that mean that you know what your talking about? I hope that is not what your suggesting.
Again, what does it mean that you’ve been a Mets fan since Day one in April of 1962?
“The Yanks and the Phillies spend money because the think they owe the fans something”
*sigh*
If the Yanks are spending money so much, why do they (still) have a glaring weakness with their bullpen? Yeah, the Yanks got Rafael Soriano (which is a good/bad kind of move. Good because they now have a stable bridge to Mariano. Bad because they sacrificed their 1st round pick to their division rival, who will have a HUGE haul as it is come June) and Pedro Feliciano. What about the rest of their (shaky) pen? What are they gonna do if a starter gets lit up early and the Yanks have no choice but to go to their pen? Which leads me to their starting rotation…
Right now, after Sabathia, the rotation is also not a sure thing. Hughes may be the next victim of the “Verducci effect”, Burnett blows, Nova is a question mark (he was good last season in AAA, but how will he do in a full ML season?) and Pettitte is not coming back. Last I heard, they’re after Justin Duchscherer & Bartolo Colon. Not the most attractive names, now are they?
He is an idiot and I never cared for him. He doesn’t know what hes talking about and lets not forget hes the guy who said the hall of fame needs guys like Bonds, A rod and Ramirez ( Manny ) when it clearly doesn’t in my own opinion because they were PED users among other players. Sorry for going off topic but I had to make my point and voice my opinion.
Nice post Craig. It’s comical to think that Carrasco is overpaid at $1.25 million per year. He has been proven to be more than serviceable out of the pen over the past 3 seasons. Has Heyman seen what relievers have been getting this offseason? I found one comparison that was interesting:
3-year average:
Pitcher A (37-years-old)- 64 1/3 IP, 81 K’s, 3.78 ERA, 1.32 WHIP
Pitcher B (33-years-old)- 70 IP, 52 K’s, 3.73 ERA, 1.32 WHIP
2010:
Pitcher A- 64 IP, 75 K’s, 4.08 ERA, 1.31 WHIP
Pitcher B- 78 1/3 IP, 65 K’s, 3.68 ERA, 1.30 WHIP
Pitcher A, Octavio Dotel, signed a 1-year/$3.5 million contract while pitcher B, well, that’s Carrasco. Sure Dotel was brought in to Toronto to close (which warrants more money) and I’m not in any way arguing that Carrasco is a better reliever, just that anyone who thinks his contract warrants inclusion amongst the most overpaid free agents from this offseason should have their head and motives examined.