In an article for ESPN Insider (subscription required), Paul Swydan writes that Mets management is ruining the Mets. Among some of his arguments was his view on how Sandy Alderson has handled the team’s still unresolved first base situation, which he believes was the most telling sign that things were going to be bad this season.
The problems started at first base. Despite the fact the team has been watching Ike Davis play baseball for more than half a decade — with most of that time coming in Queens, N.Y. — they needed to wait through spring training and into the first three weeks of the season before finally deciding to trade him.
In theory, you could suppose that the Mets were holding out for a better return in exchange for Davis, but instead they took a 25-year-old relief pitcher in Zack Thornton — who wasn’t even deemed good enough to be selected in a now-diluted Rule 5 draft last winter — and a player to be named later, who will likely be a second-tier prospect from the 2013 draft. Given that the team was trying to trade Davis all offseason, that’s a pretty paltry return.
The salt in the wound is that the Mets may have chosen the wrong first baseman to trade…Given how much time the team took to make the decision, you would hope they would have gotten it right, and so far, it does not appear that they have.
Entering Monday’s game, Davis was batting .303 in 32 games with a .395 on-base and .824 OPS in 115 plate appearances.
I’m still shocked at how the front office thought it was a good idea to come back with the same exact infield they spent months publicly denigrating as soon as last season ended.
To hear all the negative things they said about Davis, Duda and Ruben Tejada from September through January, and then have the same front office roll into Port St. Lucie in February singing their praises, was kind of tough to digest.
