Nobody is sure that the Mets will be aggressive in the free agent market this year. So far general manager, Sandy Alderson has accepted the resignation from Terry Collins and made him his special assistant. Then he fired Dan Warthen and stated he will stay with the team. Mets trainer Ray Ramirez was fired but the strength and conditioning team were retained to be re-evaluated. So, some new faces will be in the front office this year to join the old faces who failed miserably?
A good corporation would have cleaned out these coaches and brought in all new faces. The fact that hitting coach Kevin Long still has a job means that Alderson will force him on the new manager. Unless Long is the new manager in waiting? The Mets were 19th in hitting. Only 11 teams were worse and yet the team is rewarding that?
This could be a massive change or just window dressing. The Mets will have a public search for a manager but Sandy Alderson may have already identified his candidate and just doesn’t want to tell the fans just yet.
The Mets have blamed this season on injuries. They were a part of it and not replacing personnel right away, with somebody qualified, when the injury to Jeurys Familia happened that started the domino effect in the bullpen.
Coming into this season the Mets still have question marks at first base (Dominic Smith has a lot to learn over the winter), second base (Maybe Rivera) and third base (hopefully not Cabrera or Reyes). Catcher is still in question with the duo of Kevin Plawecki and Travis d’Arnaud not producing well at all over the course of the season. They need at least one good arm in the bullpen and possibly an outfielder with power to play right field or center field depending on the progress Michael Conforto can make to get into the starting lineup by Opening Day 2018.
The Mets need to lock up Jacob deGrom this winter. They have Matt Harvey for one last season and now they can force Noah Syndergaard to prove himself once again (I’d sign him long term now but they probably won’t). The rest is up in the air. To me, the other two spots in the rotation are up for grabs. Most likely this will be filled from within and not the free agent market.
I thought the Mets had it all together in early April. Then it all fell apart. That happens sometimes but the Mets didn’t do a lot with early call ups or aggressively trading to try and keep their playoffs alive. We all watched them disintegrate over time. It was painful.
Now they will have to sell the fans a new bill of goods. That will start with the manager and end with the general manager. The players will reflect the “new attitude” that we all hope this club has. Otherwise the Mets will continue to drift further away from the dream pitching staff and their 2014 World Series appearance.
