moonslav59

I thought Ben deserved at least one more year with a push from above to make at least one big prospect deal. The only way I see keeping DD longer was to keep spending. I thought it made sense to let him go, if the idea was to gut the team and budget. While Bloom was handed a near impossible situation, he failed to do what he was hired to do; Namely find diamonds in the rough and keep us nearer to contention than he ended up doing. I like that Brez had made serious moves to change the farm culture towards pitching as a higher priority, but that takes time- maybe longer than JH has patience for, and for all we know, maybe the changes will not help. I admire the effort, anyway. Bloom kept the priorities on everyday players and tried to trade and sign for pitching. He failed on that. I happen to think Brex built a nice core to work with as a foundation. I thought he did enough over the winter to make us a playoff contender, and I guess 3 GB is not really "out of it," but it seems we have fallen much short to expectations than many felt we would, so far. With the Devers trade and all the long term injuries, I'm not sure why there should still be much optimism. I'm not for trading top prospects for bigtime rentals, and I doubt we find another Beeks for Nate or Aldo Ramirez for Schwarber deal out there. I guess those two cases do offer some hope, but we need to make a serious mover in the next 5 weeks for me to want us to be serious buyers. (But, again, not too serious.)

With Devers dumped and Bregman on the IL, I fully agree.

Wrong, again. Does "How Soon Is Now?" ring a bell?

I fully understand the reasons to avoid long term deals. Just look at history, but look at the history of our $10M/1 and $20 to $40M/2 deals. It's very hard to win without a few really top players, and who do we have for 2026, other than Crochet? We may lose the only other one, in Bregman, if we don't offer an longer deal. We do have a few better than average players in several slots and some with high upside, but I can't see us building a championship team by signing only short or shorter term mid-level deals.

I'm not making an excuse. I'm merely pointing out that if you trade tomorrow's stars for the here and now, it will effect tomorrow. You can keep saying we can just spend more and more and more, but even that has limits. How many rings do the high spending Mets have?

Journeymen: Gio, Wilson, Romy (all doing okay) Toro, Eaton, Wong, DHam and Weissert. Useful vets: Bregman, Chapman,Abreu, Refsnyder Not useful: Buehler, Hicks, Hendriks with Duran & Houck (not for right now, anyway) Players approaching pre-prime or peak prime: Crochet, Bello, Dobbins, Sandoval, Crawford, Slaten Whitlock, Harrison, Narvaez, Mayer, Anthony, Rafaela, and prospects not yet in MLB. I'm not sure where the "most" comes from. Feel free to move anyone to the Journeymen category and name the "Highly suspect" suspects, specifically. If you count Gio, Wilson, Romy, Duran and Houck in either of your categories, I come to maybe 13 out of 26. (See the Journeymen + Not useful lists)

I know I'm a homer. I know I've been more of an optimist than many on this site, but I'm souring on this year's hopes due to the Devers trade and being sick and tired of pinning hopes on players returning from the IL and producing like they were beforehand. That's been as bad as the "wait till next year" mantra. "Wait till ____, ____ & _____ return!" Trying to be objective, let's look at our near half way point fWAR positional rankings: 9th Catcher (Better than I expected and a nice outlook going beyond 2025) 25th 1B (Way worse than I expected and little hope Casas will rebound, next season.) 28th 2B (This position has been absurdly horrible for way too long. Only Mayer at 2B would give me hope, but we need him at SS and maybe 3B, too. KC might rebound.) 23rd SS (About what I expected, but that was assuming Story would not be healthy. No hope here, except Mayer.) 3rd 3B (Was #1 before Bregman got hurt. No hope, here, if Bregman bolts. See Mayer comment) 15th LF (Falling like a lead balloon and worse than I expected for a Duran regression. Anthony & Jh Garcia offer hope.) 6th CF (Better than I expected from Rafaela. Nice outlook, here.) 6th RF (I actually expected this from the Abreu-Refsnyder platoon. Nice future, here.) 4th DH (But this is a mirage with Devers gone.) 4th Pen (Way, way, way better than I expected. Future unknown.) 15th SP (About as expected. The depth helped, a lot, but the failures of Houck and Buehler to nail down the 2-3 slots killed us. Bello and Dobbins help make the future look brighter, but they do not offset the darkness from Houck, Crawford, Criswell and Fitts from preseason expectations.) All in all, C, CF, RF, the pen and 3B look like pluses for 2025. That's it. That is not hopeful.

It would take trading away much of "next year's" talent, and then when we fall short, like we likely will, anyway, we can't even say "Wait till next year." We'll be saying, "Wait till 2033."

Agreed. Everytime we spend $10M/1, I say "You get what you pay for." Every winter I beg for a top pitcher signing or trade- or both. I loved the Crochet trade and wanted Fried, too. Fried got $27M x 8. While 8 years is absurd, it's what is needed to get guys like him. The $27M AAV was $6M more than Buehler! We spent almost $90M on Buehler, Gio, Sandoval & Hendriks. Add the money we spent on Richards, Kluber, Paxton and others you can see where I'm going with this. It doesn't equal what Fried cost, but in terms of AAV, it's $27M vs anywhere from about $10M to more than $27M, each season. I totally agree with you on this, Bell. To me, it has been our biggest singular failure since the Nate re-signing, and even that one was not super great. (extending him after '22 would have been.) We need to take the plunge. I'm not sure this winter offers the type of guy to do it with. I really liked Fried, last winter, but we need to roll the dice. How Soon Is Now?

To think we can do enough at the deadline to become a serious contender might be the biggest mistake possible. Now, if we pull things together in the next 5 weeks, and returning players from the IL are looking back to form, and we seem to be just 2- maybe 3- key pieces from being a top 3 AL team, then okay, but as of now, that seems pretty remote. We should know more in a few weeks. I'm not giving in, yet, but if the trade deadline was tomorrow, I'm all in on selling every FA, except if Bregman can be extended. Then, I trade Duran and or Abreu. If we trade both for nice returns, we can go with ... LF Anthony CF Rafaela RF Jh Garcia DH Yoshida- Romy

Money was certainly a part of the Sale trade, as it was with Betts. Not replacing the money for Kimbrel & Kelly, Porcello & ERod, JD & Bogey and on and on. Not many GMs could take a roster gutting like that and produce winning teams. They certainly could have done better. Even $10M/1 deals should eventually net a good result.

He may decide to go for years in his next deal, thinking he put to rest all the "He's in decline" talk. Maybe not.

I said, the exception was Bregman. If we can extend him, do it, if not, then trade him and maybe try to sign him, again this winter. Um, JH spent big this past winter. Bregman $40M AAV, Buehler $21M AAV, Chapman $12M AAV and then the Crochet extension and KC one, too. The Devers trade undid much of it, but we are still over the tax line. I'm not saying he will spend big, this winter, but he did show some signs last winter.

By bidding $5M more, no matter what. I see 3-4 FA pitchers that would be good enough #2 for us. Let them have 2 and we should be able to get 1. If not, trade for pitching and sign Bregman and Tucker, or Bregman and Alonso or Bregman and ____.

Had we kept Sale, we would not have had the cash to pay for someone even less promising than Gio.

I did not like the Gio signing on day one, either, for the reasons everyone has stated. He sucked for the second half of 2023. I did see him as more likely to pitch more innings than Sale with some hope he could bounce back. It's not like the first half of 2023 does not count or was so far away that it was absurd to think he might pitch that well, again. He's kinda doing that now, so the idea looks less absurd, now. That was the point I was trying to highlight. The trade sucks, in hindsight, There is no doubt on this. We both did not think it was a bad deal trading Sale, saving $17M AAV, adding what we hoped was a 2B solution and then using the savings on someone that looked like a better bet than Kluber, Richards, Paxton and Martin Perez. It made some sense to us, at the time, so I find it hard to slam Brez for what happened in hindsight. It was a bad trade, but it wasn't illogical, at the time. IMO, it wasn't an obvious bad idea at the time.

I'm not sure PIT is willing, but we should try. Skubal from DET, too. TOP fWAR pitchers since 2023: 14.3 Wheeler (not available) 13.4 Skubal (Det is a contender) 12.7 Logan Webb (not available) 11.6 Sonny Gray (past prime) 11.0 Sale (LOL) 10.8 Valdez (FA will be 32) 10.4 Cease (FA will be 30) 9.7 Gausman (not available) 9.4 P Lopez (trade with MIN?) 8.8 C Sanchez (PHI- not available) 8.6 C Ragans (KC traded for him in 2023 for Chapman) 8.6 Kirby (not available) 8.5 Lugo (FA will be 36) 8.1 Fried & Gilbert (not available) 8.0 R Suarez (FA will be 30) 7.3 to 7.9: Skenes, Kikuchi, Burnes, Wacha, Steele, M Keller, Gallen, Ryan, M King, Nate, Luzardo, Gore.) 2024-2025: 10.1 Skubal 8.9 Sale 8.4 Wheeler 8.0 Crochet 7.8 Webb 7.7 Skenes 7.0 Sanchez 6.8 Cease (FA) 6.5 Ragans 6.4 Valdez (FA) 15. Seth Lugo (5.6 FA) 16. Ranger Suarez (5.5 FA) 17. M King (5.3 FA) I'm thinking it's time we take the plunge on a top FA starter.

He has sucked- no doubt. ERA: 10.29 1st innings 5.50 2 to 7 innings Yes, both suck, but one makes it impossible for the offense to pull out a win. The other, not so much. (He has a 2.73 ERA in innings 2-3, 14.29 in inning 4 and 3.53 innings 5-7.)

Wow, I can't see how they say no, even though the three pitchers are kinda far away. That looks like more than the Crochet offer. I think PIT would want Abreu, not Duran due to the money and extra years of control for Abreu. I'm thinking Abreu, Campbell, Arias, Bleis, and two from Tolle, Clarke, Early and Perales.

Controllable pitchers are rarely traded at the deadline, and it is my opinion that they cost more at the deadline than the winter, so in general, I doubt we can find a trade like that in July. Instead, the more likely plan to better position us for a trade like that this winter would be to trade Duran and or Abreu for prospects and then get the best prospects we can for Chapman, Wilson, Buehler, Gio and Refsnyder. If the Bregman extension looks like a no go, then trading him makes sense, too. I think we can get some very nice pieces and a few decent auxiliary pieces with the names I listed. When you factor in the idea that we have a few valuable prospects in our system, now that we can add to winter packages, I think we'd have enough to make 2-3 very significant trades to fill 3 of our highest 6 need areas: SP2, Closer, solid P, 3B, 2B and 1B. The other 3 could be filled by spending to at least the level of replacing the contracts of Devers, Bregman, Buehler, Gio, Chapman and the lesser deals traded away, like Duran at $8M for '26. This is not going to be easy. We can't afford swings and misses like Buehler and the Sale trade, unless we spend to absurd levels to fill the 6-7 high need areas plus keep or add to our depth. I'm not sure JH is up to the task, especially after spending more, this past winter, and seeing no improvement.

Not mentioning every little thing does not mean I am unaware. I've said all along, the rest of the AL was mediocre and almost every team that was better than us, last year, did very little to improve and actually several got worse on paper. It was one of my main reasons for preseason optimism. I still am optimistic about our extended future, but not for 2025. Citing how much of our budget is on the IL is nothing to be optimistic about. Very few are expected back, soon, and all but maybe Bregman and Sandoval offer any big impact hopes. Sure, out kids could all mature, quickly, over the next 2-3 months, and maybe we see a bounce back from Buehler, Houck, Dobbins from injury or a guy like Sandoval, along with Bregman stepping in right where he left off and a bunch of other things all going right, at the same time, but the odds are not very high, Max.

Yes, and we also let Kimbrel and Kelly go before 2019 with no corresponding additions. The breakdown began under DD, and the revelation that Betts was almost traded under DD confirms the choice was made before the Bloom hire and DD departure.

Yes, but it was $36M vs the $26M we were spending on the incredibly unreliable Sale. We essentially replace Sale with Gio at $10M AAV and added what we thought was our 2B solution. Again, we all know it backfired on all the fronts: Sale, Gio & Grissom, but at the time, it made "SOME SENSE," right? You really don't see any logic in the attempt to improve on rotation reliability and a 2B upgrade?

I'm not sure I want us to be buyers, even at .500. I know 500 might mean 2-3 GB the WC slot, but I'd rather just pack it in on '25, in hopes that selling would improve our chances at being better in 2026.

To me, our OF is our best and deepest position, so the only way signing Tucker makes sense, is if JH has decided to go all the way in on all the way in. there are teams that can't afford Tucker, but would love to settle on Duran or Abreu. We could trade both as parts of packages that bring us back pitching or infield upgrades. We simply have to bring Bregman back. The only other option I see is to sign Alonso and keep Mayer at 3B. I'm not sure Murakami is worth the dice roll on adding a corner infielder. Suarez, Naylor, Arraez or Hoskin might be acceptable additions over Bregman and or Alonso, but only if we have made major upgrades, elsewhere, like Tucker and an second ace. I'm not a Bichette, Grisham or Bellinger fan, so I don't see them as the right way to spend money on upgrades. I don't like the idea of spending big on DH only guys like Ozuna and Schwarber, but we do need a big bat, somewhere- somehow. Torres (2B) or Realmuto (C) may be too costly to fill our 2B and back-up C roles. Top FA SP'ers: Cease, Gallen, Valdez, M King, Suarez: Yes Lugo, Flaherty, Eflin, M Kelly, Canning: Maybe as #3 men. Top Closers: Suarez, Helsley, Diaz: Yes R Iglesias, Chapman, Weaver: Okay Finnegan: Maybe I think we will have to rely on trades- most likely Duran and or Abreu. We could trade both and sign Tucker or go with Anthony, Rafaela & Jh Garcia. We could trade Campbell, Arias, Bleis, Cespedes and others, including some prospects we might pick up at the deadline. We could include prospect pitching, if the return is more promising pitching.