I caught a Mailbag Post on MetsBlog entitled: Can the Mets “Matt Moore” Matt Harvey?
Huh? Oh I see…
Basically that’s the MB reader’s term for describing the concept of locking up a young promising player through his arbitration years and maybe even buying out one or two years of that player’s free agency, as the Tampa Bay Rays did last Winter with Matt Moore.
In his response, my buddy Michael Baron said he likes to refer to this type of deal as an “Evan Longoria Deal”.
Now that’s perfectly cool and all, but I just want to point out that as Mets fans, we should probably refer to them as an “Omar Minaya Deal”.
Especially when you consider it was Omar Minaya who signed two of the best homegrown position players the Mets have ever produced to those same type deals, and did so long before the Matt Moore or Evan Longoria deals ever happened.
Of course I’m talking about Minaya’s foresight in signing both Jose Reyes and David Wright to team friendly deals that have stood the test of time and kept the Mets from ever having to challenge either player in arbitration, while also delaying their free agency by at least one year, and in the case of Wright, two years.
Minaya surprised most Met fans, and even the media was caught off guard, when he got both the Reyes and Wright deals done simultaneously – and then announcing them on August 8th, 2006…
Longoria wouldn’t even make his major league debut until two years later.
Who knows… Minaya may have even been the inspiration for both the Longoria and the Moore deals years later, as Tampa Bay takes a page out of his playbook. Just saying…
As for Matt Harvey, let’s see what he can do in 2013 before we decide to “Omar Minaya” him.
