Jim Bowden of ESPN Insider listed the Mets among nine teams he believes will be among the “Movers and Shakers” leading up to the trade deadline, asserting that GM Sandy Alderson is simply waiting for the right opportunity to strike.
“Alderson has never been one to make a hasty, knee-jerk trade. He has historically taken his time, then made solid moves to improve the team’s future,” Bowden said.
“Timing is not as important as winning deals and filling voids at the right price. Mets fans will just have to be patient and have confidence that Alderson will eventually strike to improve his team.”
As has been discussed ad nauseam, the team’s deepest strength is their starting pitching, however the Mets would rather move Jon Niese, Dillon Gee and Bartolo Colon instead of one of their young power arms, which makes the chance for a deal less likely.
Last week, Alderson blamed an uncertain and ambiguous market, however on Wednesday he told reporters that the market has expanded and more options have become available.
“Things will pick up, I think the marketplace will be more active and there are more possibilities now,” Alderson said. “We’ll see what shakes out, but definitely the activity will pick up in the next week.”
In an interview with Kristie Ackert of the Daily News on Thursday, Alderson seemed content with where the team is currently in view of all the injuries and no real contributions on offense from anyone except for Curtis Granderson.
Looking at the Mets offense through the first half of the season, a lineup that without David Wright and Travis d’Arnaud has struggled to score runs, Sandy Alderson knows something has to change.
“We’ll the good news is, we’re two games over .500 and really have not gotten major consistency or significant contributions from anybody except Granderson.”
“So you can look at it in retrospect, ‘Gee that’s got to change.’ On the other hand you can also say, it can only go up.”
It’s pretty clear what the team’s needs are, but at the same time that has to weighed against the cost to acquire the player both in dollars and prospects.
Alderson made it abundantly clear it comes down to one player and that he’s not in a position to add more than that. So in other words, just one bullet so make it count.
Sandy has insisted the dollars are there, but executives from other teams tell Ken Rosenthal and Joel Sherman differently.
“Is that gamesmanship by the Mets to try to get competitors to lower demands or honesty? Because if it is honesty, that means the Mets brass is lying to their fan base through the New York media by saying they can spend,” writes Sherman.
The point is that all eyes are on Sandy who said he expected this team to win 90 games in March, and that he’d be “disappointed if the Mets failed to make the postseason.”
The ball is in his court now as the season hangs in the balance.
