It’s no secret the offseason has been slow as molasses to develop this year. However, Mets general manager Sandy Alderson is hoping that will work ever in his favor.
Waiting out the market to land Jay Bruce to a three-year, $39 million deal worked for New York, but hopefully they won’t have to stop there. We’re more than midway through the month of January and there is still a boatload of talent out there.
With that being said, there are still some quality infielders available that the Mets might be able to land on team-friendly deals. Eduardo Nunez, Todd Frazier or Neil Walker could each help round out the infield.
On Wednesday at Citi Field where the team formally introduced Bruce, Alderson said the team has the pieces to make a trade, but will likely turn to the free agent market.
“A trade is a possibility,” Alderson said. “If we were to try to improve in that area, I think we prefer to sign a free agent, only because it doesn’t require us to give up talent.
“We have talent to give up. It’s not like we don’t have players that anybody wants. There’s been a lot of talk about our farm system. It’s not as strong as it used to be, but we’ve got plenty of good players that people want. I’ve never been big on giving up young players anyway.”
Alderson also said “I think so,” when asked if the Mets could still add a significant contract.
A lot of teams have been reluctant to dole out huge contracts to players based on their past performances and are using more big data to analyze how these players can perform in the future, which is why the hot stove has been rather cold all winter.
“I think there’s been a sea change in the industry and it’s really a function of, to put it in a nutshell, big data,” Alderson said. “Because everybody has information. […] Everybody’s information is roughly the same, which means the assessments of the players are probably more uniform today than they ever have been because they’re predicated not on subjective observation, but more so on numbers. And the numbers are pretty consistent from team to team.
“Why? In part because the numbers are out there in the public domain. You guys read FanGraphs, you guys read Baseball Prospectus, we all read it. As I look at it, there are a lot of people evaluating the players similarly, and have also kind of concluded that some of these free agent contracts have just not worked out economically in the past as people would have liked.”
With Spring Training right around the corner, the Mets are hoping they will have a player or two fall into their laps. For their sake, fingers crossed the stove continues to be cold like the winter.
The Bruce signing was solid, there’s no doubt about that. His presence in the middle of the lineup and locker room again will be a huge boost to the team. However, they can’t stop there.
If they could land Todd Frazier for a two-year deal similar to what they are paying Bruce annually, or maybe even less, they should do it by all means.
Plus, I have been saying I think the Mets need to add another reliever and potentially another starter. If they are able to do that, I would consider this offseason to be pretty good.
We’ll have to see what happens, but it’s conceivable that if the Wilpons are willing to loosen their purse strings just a bit more, we will be in good shape.
