Jon Heyman of CBS Sports reported that the Mets are unlikely to pursue a first baseman from outside the organization this winter, after speaking to Sandy Alderson.
“The Mets expect to have their first base answer in-house, between Ike Davis, Lucas Duda and Josh Satin. That will leave shortstop and the outfield corners as the main areas for import.”
It sort of sounds like what I’ve been saying all along regarding first base and that ultimately the Mets can fix this problem with an in-house solution – and one that should also include Allan Dykstra and Wilmer Flores to the names Heyman mentioned above.
You all know my thoughts on David and Duda and I see no future for them at first base for the Mets. Duda gave me some reason to pause after a very brief hot streak, but in his last ten games, the lumbering first baseman is batting .206 (7-for-34) with one home run and 12 strikeouts.
Speaking about Duda and the injury to Duda a week ago, Alderson said, “I actually think the injury with Ike might make it easier for us to make a decision going into the off-season because it’s going to give Duda substantially more playing time in September.”
Regarding Davis, Sandy sounded a bit perplexed to me.
“There’s some positives since Davis came back. He’s had a very high on-base percentage. His batting average has been fine. He hasn’t shown any power. Has he given up the power to get the batting average and the on-base percentage up a little bit? I don’t know.”
“My hope had been that becoming a little more selective at the plate, which may have led to being a little more cautious or being a little more tentative at the plate, would eventually lead to the power coming back once he got his confidence back. So I think there are reasons to believe that Ike was heading in the right direction.”
Adam Rubin reported that the Mets have no intentions of non-tendering Davis after the season. The 26-year old is earning $3.12 million this season. Duda, 27, is only earning $550K and won’t be eligible for arbitration until 2015.
In his weekly baseball chat this week, Keith Law of ESPN fielded a question about the Mets first base candidates for next season:
Chris (NYC) – Josh Satin, Lucas Duda, Allan Dykstra….how nauseous does it make you when people recommend them as starters at 1B for Mets?
Klaw – It’s baseball’s Stockholm Syndrome – fans of bad teams latch on to mediocre players when that’s the best they’ve got. And then they accuse me of hating their teams when I point out that, hey, Junior Lake isn’t anything to get excited about.
I don’t know if Met fans are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps some are where Davis and Duda are concerned. But trying to conserve resources at first base by platooning Satin with Dykstra, or seeing if 22-year old Flores can handle the position full time makes more sense than blowing everything up and just trading our pitching prospects for a solution or throwing money at the problem.
While I’m the first one to say it’s time to move on from Duda and Davis, I still believe the solution to first base exists internally.
