The New York Mets are in an enviable position as the free-agent market opens because they may be the one team in baseball that really doesn’t need David Price or Zack Greinke.
Too bad the market doesn’t also offer them what they do need.
The Mets have their rotation, it’s soon to be five-deep and they already know it’s good enough to get them to the World Series. Good enough to win it, too, because the Mets’ loss to the Kansas City Royals had a lot more to do with hitting, defense and the bullpen than with the starting pitchers.
“They need to get more athletic,” one rival scout said a few days after Game 5.
A reasonable suggestion, but the Mets aren’t going to become the next World Series champs by turning into the Royals. They don’t need to. They just need an offense good enough to support their championship-level starting pitching, a group still so young that none of them is eligible for free agency for three more years.
They don’t need Price, they don’t need Greinke and they probably aren’t going to play for any of the biggest-name free-agent hitters, either. My friend Joel Sherman suggested in Wednesday’s New York Post that a successful Mets winter would have them signing Ben Zobrist, Darren O’Day and Gerardo Parra, and a scout familiar with the Mets agreed those seem like reasonable targets.
Fair enough. Any of the three would help. All three would fill significant needs.
Now tell me which one of them is going to replace Daniel Murphy in the third spot in the Mets batting order. Tell me which one takes over for Yoenis Cespedes as both the cleanup hitter and the lineup presence the Mets rode through August, September and October.
The Mets are unlikely to keep Murphy and Cespedes, and just as with their reluctance to trade pitching, there are significant baseball (i.e. not financial) reasons to let both of them walk. Signing Zobrist to replace Murphy would give the Mets a stronger defense and more flexibility. Cespedes‘ willingness to play center field was admirable, but do you really want him locked in there for full seasons?
The Mets are committed to Lucas Duda and David Wright at the infield corners. Right fielder Curtis Granderson was probably their best position player from start to finish, and they smartly would like to see Michael Conforto with an everyday chance in left field.
They could think about moving Granderson down in the order and signing a center fielder who bats leadoff (Denard Span?), but manager Terry Collins smartly doesn’t want to switch Granderson from the spot where he has had the most success. They could theoretically move Granderson to center field, opening up a corner spot to sign someone like Justin Upton, but Granderson as a full-time center fielder doesn’t fit any better than Cespedes did.
So back to the middle of the order, because remember, the day before the Mets began their late-July makeover, they faced Clayton Kershaw with John Mayberry Jr. batting fourth and Eric Campbell right behind him. Remember, the Mets were 28th in baseball in runs scored before the All-Star break, and even with their outstanding pitching (third in baseball), they were so bad offensively they were a 52-50 team before the July 31 Cespedes trade.
They could be better in 2016, if Travis d’Arnaud can stay healthy for a full year, and if Lucas Duda can be a little more consistent, and if Conforto makes a difference in his first full season, and if Wright can stay both healthy and productive.
Or, how about this if: What if the Toronto Blue Jays decide to trade Troy Tulowitzki and the Mets could make a deal for him?
So far, there’s no real suggestion Tulowitzki or any offensive star who fits the Mets’ positional needs (middle infield, center field) can be had in a trade. Mets general manager Sandy Alderson is on record saying he doesn’t want and doesn’t expect to trade any of his big pitchers.
If you’re limited to free agents and you don’t like Sherman’s Zobrist/Parra combo, you could go with Ian Desmond or Asdrubal Cabrera in the middle of the infield, or with Span or Dexter Fowler or Colby Rasmus in center field. But again, which one of those does what Murphy and Cespedes did?
The Mets won the National League in 2015 without making the pitching-for-hitting deal many wanted to see last winter. They could win it all in 2016 without trading any of those pitchers this winter—if a whole lot of other things come true.
At worst, one Mets official said by phone Wednesday, the Mets should be able to ride their pitching and whatever lineup they can build into some form of contention. At worst, he said, they can give themselves another shot, and perhaps Alderson can work the same July magic he did this year.
That’s probably not what Mets fans who got a taste of success and crave more would want to hear. But with a starting rotation so good and so young the Mets can build around it for years to come, it’s probably the right way to go.
Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
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