It is never a bad thing when there’s two competitive baseball teams in New York. You can count on one hand how many times that’s actually happened. It was looking like that in 2021 – right into the July 31 trade deadline but the walls eventually caved in and they finished a distant third behind Atlanta and Philadelphia in the NL East.
It has been a rollercoaster 12 months for the Mets since Steve Cohen took over as owner. Fans had initially thought they would attract a highly-regarded executive such as Theo Epstein or David Stearns to run the show and success would immediately follow. Things don’t always work like that in pro sports, though. Sometimes it can be a long, windy road.
The Mets were unable to attract the executives that they had hoped – for a variety of reasons. Some simply were under contract with other teams and the owner wouldn’t grant them permission to interview. Others do not want the stress of working in the pressure cooker of New York. Others do not want to uproot their families. Some are likely intimidated by working for a ruthless businessman like Steve Cohen, and I’m sure others are not thrilled to have Sandy Alderson working above and his son, Bryn, working beneath.
In between, there have been a deluge of negative stories about the team from the failed Jared Porter tenure as GM, to the DWI of Zach Scott, the failure to sign first round pick Kumar Rocker and then their chief rival, Atlanta Braves, winning the World Series. It is never smooth sailing for the Mets.
Most recently, they hired Billy Eppler to be their General Manager, which was met with mixed reviews by the fanbase. I don’t have a strong opinion on Eppler. Clearly, he is a seasoned scout with plenty of experience around the game. He worked his way up from a scout with the Colorado Rockies to Brian Cashman‘s right-hand man and eventually as the No. 1 for the Los Angeles Angels. So there’s a body of work there, but he was unable to build a winner in LA and you could argue the Yankees’ weakest teams were with him as the Assistant GM.
That brings us to this week.
Mets fans were more on-edge than ever after Steven Matz spurned them for a four-year deal with the St. Louis Cardinals. Many fans were beginning to get fed up with Steve Cohen and the front office. Some even claimed things are worse than they were with the Wilpons.
First let me pause there. That is a completely ridiculous statement. The Wilpons were bordering on being broke, they were regarded as the worst owners in sports for a reason and since taking full control of the team in 2002, they won a grand total of 1 National League pennant and 0 World Series. They got a free pass from the media with the exception of columnists like Jeff Passan and Marc Carig. They had a two decade run of futility. Steve Cohen has been at the helm for one year, he brought in Francisco Lindor and still gets sharply criticized.
Anyway, with a lockout looming on December 2, the Mets definitely needed to make upgrades.
They did that in a big way yesterday as they signed Eduardo Escobar, Mark Canha and Starling Marte – three starting players with track records of success. If you want to nitpick, you could point to their age (all will play 2022 at age-33), but they are low-risk deals and they have all been healthy players.
Marte stole 47 bases last year and is among the best defensive center fielders in the game. Canha is an OBP machine with 20+ HR pop and plays all three outfield positions. Escobar plays three infield positions and was an All-Star last year. They would be upgrades for almost any team.
They are still in the market for Javier Baez, and then they’ll need to focus on signing two starting pitchers and some relief help to replace Aaron Loup but there is no mistaking that yesterday was a productive day for the Mets.
Assuming that they don’t neglect the pitching staff, they should be back in the mix in the East. Now if they can pair this with Max Scherzer, the NY sports world will explode.
