Adam Rubin of ESPN New York spoke with a Mets insider who told him that the Mets interest in Curtis Granderson and Nelson Cruz is being overstated.
The Mets have publicly acknowledged interest in both free agent outfielders, but you have to understand that this is no different than what we’ve seen before regarding other elite free agent options over the years.
Interest is one thing… Making an offer is completely something different and the Mets have not tendered any offers to any free agents.
They’ve made some calls and they may even meet with Scott Boras today, but even that meeting is now up in the air.
The fact that today they leaked an unlikelihood of signing either Cruz or Granderson is not surprising if you’ve been following along with me over the last two months.
Yesterday, J.P. Ricciardi backed off on the speculation that the Mets would sacrifice a second round pick to sign any of the 13 players who refused a qualifying offer. “I don’t know that we’ll be in on any of those guys.”
There is nothing vague about that statement.
On Monday night, not even one hour after arriving in Orlando, Alderson’s first order of business was to say that he couldn’t see a scenario where the Mets would give $100 million to any free agent. “We already have one player like that, David Wright. That’s it.”
There was nothing vague about that.
When a Mets front office source was asked about the Mets being linked to Granderson and Cruz, he bluntly said: “I would not believe everything you read.”
This goes beyond reading the tea leaves. The Mets both in words and actions have given plenty of evidence to suggest that this so-called 2014 spending spree they’ve been trumpeting for the last three years is not going to materialize.
That’s not me being negative, that’s me being realistic just as I was in the past three offseasons. I’m not even buying this imaginary $30 million spending figure that keeps getting tossed around.
To repeat what I’ve said for the better part of six months now, I’ll be shocked if Mets payroll eclipses $85 million in 2014. And that’s not to say we can’t win with that level of spending, we certainly can and many teams have.
But it’s going to take some of these undervalued signings that this front office is supposed to be masters at. It’s going to require some of the things that Billy Beane and Andrew Friedman have done. So far this front office has proven to be very adept at trading away quality major league talent. Now it’s time to show the fans that they can be just as adept at adding quality major league talent. They have yet to pull that rabbit out of a hat.
