Just as we all remember where we were when 2-1/2 Men fired Charlie Sheen or when SUBWAY stopped offering their horseradish sauce dressing, we Mets fans will always remember where we were when we learned that Chris Young was “designated for assignment.”
When good teams lose a player, as the Pirates recently did with Andrew McCutchen, they look around for a player or two to pick up the slack, to try to replace as much of the player’s production as possible. No one expects Starling Marte to become McCutchen while he’s rehabbing, but for the Pirates to stay relevant Marte will have to be better. The same can be said of several other Pirates.
So I wonder whether it works the other way?
What we’ll most remember about the Chris Young Experiment (the outfielder one, not the ungodly tall one who is tearing the American League a new one in Seattle) is the feebleness of his outmaking.
Sure he had a load of strikeouts but to me his signature out was the infield popup, sometimes stretched to a can of corn for an outfielder lazily drifting in. And while the great majority of his hits went to left field, Chris managed to distribute his infield popups all over and in fair and foul territory.
Who is going to replace that? If manager Terry Collins opts to give Anthony Recker more starts down the stretch then the strikeouts we’ve seen from Young will be covered nicely there.
But those pansy popups may be just irreplaceable.
I admit that this is taking a parting potshot at a fellow who tried hard but just failed miserably. And had he been making the minimum baseball salary I probably wouldn’t even go there. But even when he’s released he will be paid his full salary. Alderson and the Mets gambled $7.25 million on this player. Even Bernie Madoff would not have paid off on a bet like that.
