Wrapping Up The Mets Off-Season: F.U. Style

By Matt "The Stat" Himelfarb
Posted Sunday, February 24, 2008

Note: Yeah, I know, going after a professional sportswriter after an initial email without giving him time to reply might seem, for lack of a better word- wimpy. But unlike the recent reports of gangs of French girls taking after each other with knives and tear gas on the streets of Paris (sounds like a normal country to me), I believe taking out my reasoned argument while the issue is still relevant is a prime example of Macho Himme. I will send this to him anyway.

I recently had a (belated) email exchange with Sports Illustrated’s Jon Heyman following the publication of his off-season grades, which crowned the Mets with a fat A. As anyone that has read my work would expect, I found time to rant about the Lastings Milledge trade and Luis Castillo’s egregious four-year contract, but in particular, discussed the fact that the Mets' acquisition of Johan Santana (which is all Heyman wrote about as far as explaining his grades) was not as impressive as everyone thought due to the lack of competition, and that the trade itself was not the reason the Mets were “now favored in the NL”, as Heyman wrote to me.

Let me be the first to say that I believe it is very difficult to decide if a trade should be considered an “over the hump deal," the type of trade that make the difference between a playoff contender and a surefire lock for the post-season, or merely one to tack on a few extra wins, regardless of whether a ball club is likely to spend much of the year in the cellar or reach the century mark in wins; the Seattle Mariners and their acquisition of Erik Bedard likely an example of the former due to their lackluster offense.

For instance, Baseball Prospectus’s Pecota system projects the Mets to finish first in the NL East with a 96-66 record, with the second place Braves trailing a full ten games behind (86-76). Judging from Santana’s WARP (wins above replacement- there’s several adjusted versions) numbers over the past three years, Santana is likely to be worth between nine-ten wins over the next two years, while Pelfrey, expecting he will at least see some mild improvement in '08, should be worth somewhere from two-four wins. Hence, since six or seven wins would not have had a colossal affect on the Mets chances of winning the division next year, would it not have behooved the Mets to keep their long-term interests in mind and kept Carlos Gomez, Deolis Guerra, and even Kevin Mulvey and Philip Humber?

On the other hand, even if both Santana’s and Pelfrey’s production next year corresponds with Pecota’s projections, the Mets overall record could still be very different due to other factors. For example, Santana’s six or seven wins might actually be the component that brings the Mets over the hump next year if their offense takes a significant step backwards and performs below what Pecota expects of them, say a further decline for Carlos Delgado and Luis Castillo or another set of injuries to Carlos Beltran and Moises Alou.

In the end, we are going to stick with our assumption that Santana will not be the “Over the Hump” guy that Heyman describes him as, having seen Pecota’s sometimes freakish success with projections over the last few years. Despite this, we still like Santana deal, somewhat equivocally, due to our dislike of Gomez, second thoughts on Guerra, and other reasons documented in the past.

So where and how do we rank the Mets' off-season? It is hard to say how the Santana and Milledge trades balance each other out, so we are simply going to give them a C as of right now. However, there is still more to the Mets off-season; true, they might be looking at a failing grade (ok, that was an exaggeration) had they signed Yorvit Torrealba, but (fortunately) that deal fell through at eleventh hour. But the fact is Minaya did manage to show some of the old small-move luster that became so commonplace in his first two years as General Manager; even if the Mets bullpen opening are slim and none going into opening day, they appear more willing to sign cheaper options (Matt Wise, Jorge Sosa) while also willing to give some face time to the Stephen Register’s, and the Brian Stokes’s, and do not be surprise if Eddie Kunz or Brant Rustich manage to sneak themselves in on the plane north. This is exactly what they should be doing, as we explained shortly after The Collapse. Angel Pagan looks like a solid pickup, and the Mets ridded themselves of Guillermo Mota without any financial consequences.

In my holy opinion, that is good enough for a solid B-B+. And yes, we have as kind of feelings for Jon Heyman and other SI staff members right now as Fire Joe Morgan has had for their internet reign; those jock-sniffing bastards.*

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*I apologize for “Xeroxing” John Peterson’s words. They just fit the situation too well.

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