Wednesday, January 13, 2010
MORE MET MISERY
I'll keep this one brief. CF Carlos Beltran is having knee surgery, and is unlikely to be ready for Opening Day. There are three things this tells us. One, it is high time to fire the Mets entire training staff and replace them with a witch doctor, or maybe Dr. Nick from the Simpsons. Two, the free agent market is, and will always be, an inefficient way to build a contender. Beltran's best seasons were in Kansas City, and he was signed at the same time as Pedro, who left his best seasons in Boston. 170 million dollars and several disappointing (to put it mildly) seasons later, here we are. So sure, let's add 35-year old Bengie Molina. He's sure to lead the stirring charge towards third place. Number three is an anagram of Merri Oaf. Got it?
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8 comments:
I, meaning the Yankees, would be glad to take Beltran off your hands.
Seriously, though, listening to the Mets conference call on this, they're pissed, and this could be the end of Beltran with the Mets. He could fetch a good pitcher.
I can't agree that Beltran had several disappointing seasons. The team, as a whole, had numerous disappointing seasons- basically, the entire 2005 to 2009 block- but for most of that time, Beltran was putting up All-Star numbers, or at the very least numbers better than most Major League center fielders. His worst season with us was certainly 2005, but he still accrued a 1.0 WAR, by Fangraphs calculations. I can't agree that he had his best season in KC, either. Compare his 2004 KC/Astros stats with his 2006 Mets stats.
I mostly meant Pedro was disappointing, due to the injuries. Beltran's 2006 playoff choke kind of cancels out the 41 regular season homers. Not entirely-- a playoff appearance is better than none at all, but success is really measured in rings.
Beltran's best season was 2006. I'd say his next best seasons are 2003 (KC), 2004 (KC/HTN), and 2001 (KC). In every year other than 2005, he has performed at or near the level the Mets thought they'd be getting from him. You can't say he's been a bust, except... he doesn't seem to play with any fire in his gut at all, and on a team that is crying out for leadership from within, he hides behind david wright's skirts.
Playoff choke? He didn't have a 2004 Carlos Beltran playoff, in 2006, but he didn't exactly choke, either. Wainwright's curveball? Koufaxian cuveballs aside, that was the best curveball I've ever seen. Really, that's as close to unhittable as you can get without getting into rhetoric or anything.
As for the "play[ing] with...fire in his gut", that's all media BS, and I think we're all smart enough to recognize it, and refrain from bringing things like that up. "Playing with fire in one's gut" is a stat that cannot be measured, and is entirely relative. And, nowhere does "it" say that playing with the aforementioned fire is conducive to playing good, either. David Eckstein is the prototypical "gritty" player, and he's wallowed in mediocrity for most of his career. It used to piss me off somewhat that Carlos Beltran was never the type of player apt to making sliding, diving catches, and thing of that nature. But, then I realized something: He's so good, he doesn't have to. What he makes look very effortless, plenty of other fielders have to make suicidal, all-or-nothing plays, or don't have any chance of catching, to begin with. So, "emotion", or the lack thereof, has no correlation with talent, which gets translated into stats- you can be as boring as a cardboard box, with a giant mole to boot, but if you're hitting 20 HR a year, if you're batting .275+, if you're stealing 20+ bases, if you're an excellent fielder, you'll have a place on my team.
David Ecksteins have their place in baseball. One or two on a team, surrounded by more skilled players. The players I admire most are the ones who combine that grit with actual skill. Say what you want about Jeter, but that fits him to a T. If you want a Met example, I offer Edgardo Alfonzo and Keith Hernandez.
The trouble with the Mets is that they lack that type of player on their roster. David Wright may grow into that player eventually, but it seems like the last few years on the Minaya Mets have stunted his growth as a "winning" ballplayer. The 2006 team benefitted from having veterans like Jose Valentin and Cliff Floyd, and yes, Paul Loduca. Guys who didn't like to lose. The Mets now are a team of complacent superstars who pile up numbers and not wins. Beltran isn't the entire problem, and on a team that was constructed by a GM who wasn't retarded, he'd fit in great. A-Rod, who is sort of the Yankees' Carlos Beltran but way more of an annoying douche, had Jeter and Tex and Damon and Godzilla and Jorge as a supporting cast, providing the necessary grit and fire.
Do you have a baseball blog too? If not, you oughta.
Players like Eckstein have their place on a team, provided that the player puts up stats to justify his inclusion on a Major League roster. "A guy like Eckstein", his stats, by and large, are marginal, and slightly-better-than-average, at best, which justifies his presence at the ML level. "A guy like Eckstein" does not deserve a spot on the roster if his skills make him a sub-optimal player. 'Heart' and a 'dirty uniform' don't win games.
If you take a look here (http://www.amazinavenue.com/2010/1/8/1235257/what-is-a-complimentary-player#storyjump), you'll see that assembling a cast of complimentary players to augment the core has been the major problem of the team over the past couple of years. As compared to 2006, the 2007 complementary players were worth almost four entire games; the 2008 team about three. Optimally- as has been the key to the success of the Phillies- the total production of your complementary players should be somewhere in the neighborhood of the amount of production by your core players.
Any kind of talk of 'complacency', 'not caring', or anything of that nature is ultimately a non sequitur. Baseball is the primary livelihood of 99.9% of all players. The more they produce individually, the more money they are likely to receive. The more they produce as a team, the more money they are likely to receive. The more they produce, as an individual player, and as a team, the more likely they are to secure their legacy in the baseball world. There is no such thing as "wanting it more"; everyone wants it. No player that I know of, on the Mets, or just in professional sports in general, have come out and said, "Blah, blah, blah, but I'm happy with second place/being the runner up/almost getting into the 'promised land', or some other derivative thereof. That some players ascribe to that sort of philosophy is nothing more than media hounding and rumor-mongering to have stories- there certainly isn't any actual evidence that isn't hearsay that corroborates that notion on the Mets of 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, or any other professional team that comes to mind.
Major disagreement here. To detour into the NBA, one of the worst examples I've ever seen of an athlete who has no heart is Eddy Curry. After signing a huge deal with the Knicks, he performed adequately for two seasons, and then basically ate himself out of the league, playing in a grand total of 9 games in the past 2 seasons while making 11.5 million per. There is NO INCENTIVE for him to live up to that contract, and there never was.
Baseball players make comparable sums, and their money is tied to their statistics, for the most part. Remember Adrian Beltre's walk year? Javy Lopez's? Carlos Delgado's campaign to get the Mets to pick up his 2009 option? I'd posit that most players want to get paid, and winning is incidental to them. The saving grace of baseball is that it is more of an individual sport than basketball, so chemistry is less important.
But, you don't need statistics to tell that the Mets have a chemistry problem, and that it existed long before it became clear they were devoid of brains in the front office. And I suspect Jose Reyes is one of the main offenders, as I've heard fairly reliable rumors that he's a raging alcoholic.
If you'll agree that money is the bottom line, and the fact that the individual's performance has a direct influence on the team's performance, then it stands to reason that, because considerable sums are awarded to players in their contracts for making All-Star Teams, winning end-of-the-year awards, playing on a team that reaches the post-season, playing on a team that wins a pennant, and, ultimately, playing on a team that wins the World Series, players have those goals in mind, money being, once again, the primary motivator. Henry Blanco, for example, can make a considerable amount more than he is making with his base salary, if he wins any kind of award, or plays on a team that is given a postseason bonus- if I recall correctly, he can almost triple it. What reason would he have for not trying his hardest? When most players have similar clauses in their contracts, they have no reason to both excel, and in doing so, make more money.
Jose Reyes is one of the main offenders of ruining clubhouse chemistry- an already dubious concept to begin with? And where did you hear that? Mike Fatcessa or some other genius on WFAN? All kidding aside, the last time we 'heard' of a clubhouse problem between players was when Paul Lo Duca posted a note on Lastings Milledge's locker, telling him to "know [his] place". Of the various problems the Mets have been running into lately, clubhouse discord is perhaps the unlikeliest of them all- hell, last season, we had such a rotating cast of characters, with playing coming and going to and from the DL, and from the Minors, it'd be hard to develop ill feelings towards players you don't know, or don't know will even be around. You think Angel Berroa made a lot of friends, or enemies in his, what, three games?
Concerning Jose Reyes, there is a very strange hypocrisy that the mainstream media, and sadly, a large swath of the fan constituency, have fallen victim to. When Jose Reyes smiles and gives David Wright a high five in the on-deck box, he does not have his head in the game and is showboating. When Shane Victorino smiles, pumps his fists in the air as he rounds the bases, he has passion. When Jose Reyes fights to stay in the game, he's disobeying the manager's orders. When Shane Victorino fights to stay in the game, he's a gamer and wants to do anything and everything in his power to keep his team in the game. When Jose Reyes starts, or is involved in fights, he's riling the other team up. When Shane Victorino starts, or is involved in fights, he's defending himself, or his teammates.
I'll indulge for a moment that there is a clubhouse problem, and it is being caused by Jose Reyes (that he's a raging alcoholic is hearsay that I'm not going to even bother addressing, as that has as much substance as the Mike Piazza is gay rumors). The solution? Cater to Jose Reyes in any and every possible way. Jose Reyes, being all of 26 right now, is arguably the second-best shortstop currently baseball, (with Hanley Ramirez being superior, and Troy Tulowitzky being the only other on the same level), the holder of numerous club records, and if all goes well, a lifetime Met. If somebody in the clubhouse has a problem with the way Jose Reyes acts, that's their problem to figure it out. As we saw in early 2007, when members of the media, and Willie Randolph were getting on Reyes' back over the way he conducted himself, his on-field production began to suffer. When Carlos Beltran (I believe) told him to proverbially tell them all to 'shove it', and Randolph got on board, Reyes returned to his normal, elite-level playing. It is especially important in 2010, Jose Reyes' contract year. To lose Reyes would be catastrophic.
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