Back in October, when the Mets season came to a merciful end, Omar Minaya, Jeff Wilpon and Dave Howard hit the road like a traveling circus culminating in their sold out performance on WFAN with the godfather of sportstalk radio, Mike Francesa.
The number one thing that came out of that interview was that the Mets were going to have a championship caliber team take the field in 2010, and that it would be accomplished with a focus and dedication to… ” pitching, speed and defense”. That was their promise and the vision they communicated to us.
The Mets have since added several players this off season, and the following should all wind up on the 25 man roster when the Mets head north in April.
Offensively, the Mets added left fielder Jason Bay, backup catcher Henry Blanco and outfielders Gary Matthews and Chris Carter to replace Carlos Delgado, Brian Schneider, Jeremy Reed and Cory Sullivan. They also re-signed infielder Alex Cora, but have yet to replace Fernando Tatis.
The Mets failed to add a starting pitcher, but replaced Brian Stokes and J.J. Putz with Kelvim Escobar and Ryota Igarashi. Both Igarashi (Japanese import) and Escobar (shoulder) can only be described as unknown quantities at this point.
Aside from Jason Bay, we mostly added another collection of reclamation projects. Furthermore, I don’t see how any of these new additions did anything to improve our pitching, our speed or our defense.
I’m glad we signed Bay, but lets face it, Pagan has more speed and is better defensively. Matthews and Carter are both liabilities defensively and neither have any speed.
Whose to say that Igarashi and Escobar will be any batter than the pitchers they’ve replaced? And what about the rotation which allowed more walks last season than any other team in the majors?
Pitching, speed and defense sounded like a good plan…
So, what happened to the plan?
