In a year where the New York Mets were decimated by injuries, losing some of their biggest stars in the process, Sandy Alderson still found the necessary pieces to get this team back to the postseason.
Rookie pitchers Robert Gsellman and Seth Lugo helped to save a starting rotation that lost Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom and Steven Matz for the season. Major League castoffs, James Loney and Rene Rivera became mainstays to a lineup that lost Lucas Duda and Travis d’Arnaud for a period of time.
“Unfortunately, we were forced to make more moves than we originally anticipated. It’s pretty satisfying that when we did have to go out and improve the roster, the moves we made really worked out for the most part pretty well,” assistant general manager John Ricco said.
“We kind of did it in all different ways and with different parts of our player development, scouting and front-office branches. Each of those groups played a role in one way or another.” (NorthJersey.com)
Carreer minor leaguer, T.J. Rivera was finally given an opportunity and has taken it by the horns, showing he can play in the majors. Not to mention the signing of Jose Reyes and the trades for Jay Bruce and Fernando Salas. Alderson some how again found the right pieces.
“A good dose of luck,” Alderson said.. “We needed the contributions from every one of those players. We were fortunate that we got them.” (NY Post)
Put together like Frankenstein himself, Alderson again was able to build a playoff caliber team. This year though they were dealt obstacle after obstacle and yet to still made it to the postseason.
“These guys kept playing, and can’t say enough about the young players who’ve come up and really made the difference,” Alderson said. “Given some of the great seasons we’ve gotten from our veterans and so forth, you have to give a tremendous amount of credit to Lugo and Gsellman for coming up and being able to sustain us over the last month and a half or so of the season. It’s been incredible the contributions they’ve made.”
Tonight, Alderson will get to see his master plan come to fruition as a New York Mets team that he put together on the fly this year, takes the field in the 2016 NL Wild Card game. Many did not believe this day would be coming as the issues with the team just continued to mount. “Ya Gotta Believe” though, right?
