They say that timing is everything. Perhaps after last night’s surprising announcement that Michael Cuddyer is retiring, thus giving the Mets a tidy financial windfall, maybe we should rethink that Juan Lagares platoon the front office was planning for the 2016 season.
Maybe it’s time for the Mets put on their big boy pants and stop saying they can’t afford what it would take to bring back outfielder Yoenis Cespedes. It’s fascinating how the front office never declines to say what a tremendous player he is, and they never say he’s not a great fit, only that he’s out of their price range.
Never look a gift horse in the mouth. And that’s exactly what Cuddyer’s retirement was to the Mets, a gift horse.
Cespedes, 30, posted a .942 OPS with 14 doubles, 17 homers and 44 RBI in 57 games for the Mets after he was acquired from the Detroit Tigers on July 31 for pitching prospects Michael Fulmer and Luis Cessa.
“We wouldn’t have gotten to the World Series without Cespedes,” Sandy Alderson said last month when looking back on the Mets season.
Finishing 13th in the NL MVP voting despite only 8 weeks in the league showed just how enormous his impact was to the team in a season that saw him produce a 6.5 WAR.
Cespedes has made it no secret that he loves playing in New York and that he enjoys the passion that Mets fans have for their team. He once told the New York Post that the last six weeks with the Mets have been the best time of his four year career in major league baseball.
It was also Cespedes himself, who called his agent and told him to get rid of the clause that would’ve limited the Mets to an exclusive five day window to sign him. He said he enjoys playing for the Mets and he wanted to be sure that they had as much time as they needed to decide whether or not they wanted to bring him back.
Here is what his interpreter Ariel Prieto told Tim Rohan of the New York Times:
“A team like the Mets, if they give him a good offer, he’s going to stay,” Prieto said . “He wants to compete; that’s what’s most important to this kid. He wants to be a part of that. That’s why he’s doing good over there, because he knows they have a good chance to go to the playoffs or even go all the way through.”
My colleague Matt Balasis did a superb job last month arguing that Cespedes’ time with the Mets was not the outlier some have contended.
“The notion that his current two month stretch is a total aberration is problematic on several levels. He was having a tremendous season even before he came to NY, and he’s had torrid streaks before. To imply that this is somehow an outlier because his career numbers don’t support it is disingenuous given the fact that he’s had stretches of doing pretty close to what we’re seeing, not to mention the dampening impact of his tumultuous history.”
“This isn’t a flash in the pan “out of nowhere” hot streak. This was a sustained six week bombardment of National League pitching the likes of which hasn’t been seen in quite some time, by a guy who many felt would be just this sort of player when he first came on the scene.”
“You either have the ability to do this or you don’t. You can count the players with the ability to do what Cespedes is doing on one hand.”
Matt is right, and let me add one more thing Cespedes is getting a bad rap for – his World Series play which he even admitted was lousy.
You have to be either completely nuts or just plain ignorant to base a 5-6 year decision on a five-game sample size. And let’s not ignore the fact Cespedes hit two homers against the Dodgers in the NLDS and drove in four runs, and then drove in three more before getting nailed in the fingers by a 95 mph fastball by the Cubs in the NLCS.
With attendance and revenue reportedly up over 50 percent this year, and a recent report by Forbes that the Mets ranked 27th in Payroll vs Revenue, will the Wilpons keep their promise to fans? Will the Wilpons increase payroll accordingly as they’ve been promising once fans flocked back to Citi Field? Or will they continue to operate in the bottom half of MLB?
Cespedes was the perfect addition at the trade deadline and remains the perfect addition this offseason. And unlike a Justin Upton who is an unknown quantity, we already know Cespedes can thrive in the spotlight of the New York media, and that no ballpark can contain him.
So what do you say, Wilpons? How about a Cespedes for the rest of us? Payroll will still be under $125 million, and would go a long way towards adding some much needed thump to the lineup.
