The LoHud Mets Blog

The Mets announced Thursday that John Franco has been elected to the team’s Hall of Fame, the 26th person in team history to be so honored.

Franco pitched for the Mets from 1990-2004, and serves in my mind as a constant in what was a turbulent decade to be a Mets fan. From my perspective, they acquired him when I was nine years old, and he stayed a Met until I was 24. So this certainly feels right to me.

With Franco in the fold, the Mets from that 1997-2000 window of success are now open to be added, it appears. Mike Piazza sure ought to follow, along with Edgardo Alfonzo and Bobby Valentine. You could certainly make a case for John Olerud or Robin Ventura as well-the former is among all-time Mets leaders in WAR (wins above replacement) though he played just three seasons in New York, and the latter gave us GRAND SLAM SINGLE.

Regardless, a good move by the Mets here. Franco is a worthy addition to the team Hall.

Very little to report on in terms of Met acquisitions. (Spoiler alert: free agents don’t play for free.)

But some truly sad news came down last week. Gary Carter, who has been fighting brain cancer, took a turn for the worse. The outlook doesn’t appear to be very good.

I was five years old during Gary Carter’s first season in 1985, so my coming of age as a Mets fan meant not realizing just how rare it was to have a catcher as outstanding as Carter.

How rare? No one had a better season at catcher for the New York Mets than Gary Carter’s 1985. His 6.7 WAR (wins above replacement) is more than a win better than any season any other Met catcher ever had. Mike Piazza’s 1998, incidentally, is tied for second at 5.5 WAR with, and this shocked me, John Stearns’ 1978. Piazza, it should be noted, contributed his 5.5 wins in just 109 games after coming over in late May.

Carter’s 1986 dropped precipitously from his 1985 level, which had been right in line with his 1977-84 peak. That’s the price of acquiring a catcher for his age-31 season. But his 3.8 wins still ranks ninth all-time in franchise history, trailing the three seasons mentioned above, three Mike Piazza seasons (1999-2001) and two Todd Hundley seasons (1996-97). Just as an aside: the Mets got a crazy amount of production from their catchers from 1996-2001.

Ultimately, Carter’s decline phase meant his 1987 value dropped below one win, never to return above that level until he posted 1.5 wins for the 1990 Giants. Overall, his career value as a Met catcher checks in at fourth, behind Piazza, Stearns and Jerry Grote. Carter racked up his 11.2 WAR with the Mets in far fewer games than any of the other three, however.

But few would argue with the idea that Carter was the best catcher the Mets ever had. And there’s that certain world championship to his name as well. The point is, one doesn’t merely have to be bowing to the stark reality of Carter’s illness to be for the Mets retiring number 8.

Good morning! Some worthwhile notes from around Mets land, as spring training still looms roughly a month away.

The Mets avoided arbitration with all four eligible players. Mike Pelfrey will earn $5.68 million, Andres Torres checks in at $2.7 million, Ramon Ramirez will receive $2.67 million, and Manny Acosta will earn $875,000. The Mets avoid the unenviable task of needing to talk down their own players. That’s the kind of thing they save for New Yorker articles.

The team is also looking to replace Wayne Hagin with Josh Lewin in the broadcast booth, as per Newsday. As someone who was repeatedly frustrated by Hagin’s refusal to give the score, and seeming delay om providing basics of the play he was calling, I am hopeful that this will be an upgrade.

Finally, for details on yesterday’s decision by the judge in the case brought by the trustee for the Bernie Madoff victims against Met ownership, I’ll refer you to my piece in Capital New York.

Well, the Met ownership has decided that the team’s financial struggles, which didn’t exist, then weren’t anyone’s business, then became part of a massive PR campaign through interviews in The New Yorker and Sports Illustrated, then were nobody’s business again, are once again worth publicly discussing. Fred Wilpon gave interviews to Newsday and the Wall Street Journal, a day after a story appeared in the New York Daily News about the ongoing minority share sale efforts.

But for all the sound and fury, what did we learn this week?

The supposed bombshell in the New York Daily News piece is as follows:

“The Mets are close to finalizing the sale of at least five $20 million shares in the team, a move that would help pay off $350 million in club debt, baseball officials familiar with the transactions told the Daily News.

Major League Baseball has vetted and approved the investors, and the team is expected to close those sales and raise more than $100 million within the month, the officials said.”

Let’s set aside that the Daily News is under-reporting the team debt, which is actually $430 million. For those keeping score as home, roughly eight months after the Mets had a minority investor, David Einhorn, approved by Major League Baseball to invest $200 million, the Mets have five investors ready to provide them with half that money. That $100 million, if it comes to pass, will go toward paying the $40 million bridge loan from last November, $25 million to Major League Baseball for a loan way past due, leaving $35 million to help them cover interest against the $430 million due against the team (totaled $30 million last year), $20 million in interest against their SNY loan due in 2015 (totaled $20 million last year), and a pair of roughly $25 million payments due on Citi Field in June and December.

And then there’s that pesky trial, starting in March, which has Irving Picard, trustee for the Bernie Madoff victims, seeking $386 million from Wilpon and his partners.

Of course, what we learned from Einhorn, and the many other times the Mets have claimed to have investors in place, is that “close” doesn’t always lead to actual cash in hand. But even in the scenario where the Wilpon group gets those five investors, it doesn’t get them very far.

As far as the two interviews of Wilpon go, the financial and legal questions were apparently off limits. The team’s rationale for hiring CRG Partners, a turnaround firm, wasn’t addressed. The result is an interview that establishes two points:

1. More than a month after Jose Reyes left, Wilpon finally provided a statement on losing the star shortstop that wasn’t utterly tone-deaf. That doesn’t do much for him at this late date.

2. Fred Wilpon still wants to own the Mets.

Well, on point 2: we knew that. The reason to believe the Mets will soon be under new ownership, whether later this year or once those massive loans start coming due in 2014, isn’t that Fred Wilpon is tired of owning the Mets. It is because he doesn’t have nearly enough money to pay his mounting obligations. And all we learned this week is that he might be close to acquiring some money that doesn’t help him cover those known obligations for even the coming year.

For a more complete accounting of the financial and legal challenges ahead, you really ought to read my book on the subject.

Fangraphs does a good job (link below) running down why it isn’t crazy that the Mets exposed Fernando Martinez to waivers to make room on the 40-man roster for Ronny Cedeno and Scott Hairston. (Tiny reliever Daniel Herrera also got the waiver treatment.)
Back in 2007, Martinez was the uber-prospect, you may remember. I’d arranged with the Binghamton Mets to spend the day with Martinez. I thought I’d have a chance to get insight into a star just before he took New York by storm.
But the weekend before my day with Fernando, he broke his hand. It was a sad harbinger of things to come.
I saw him many times in the years that followed, but seeing him last spring, in Carlos Beltran’s debut spring game, was shocking just the same. Playing in the same game as the hobbled Beltran, Martinez ran terribly, the result of an arthritic knee. Beltran moved far better that Martinez did.
I hope he finds good health and salvages his career. To me, Martinez gets placed on the shelf next to Alex Escobar. After all, both players spent plenty of time on the shelf.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/is-fernando-martinez-worth-a-waiver-claim/

There appear to be two schools of thought about the decision by the Mets to sign middle infielder Ronny Cedeno to a one-year, $1.1 million contract.

Arguing against the signing is Cedeno’s putrid .286 career on-base percentage. And this weakness really can’t be overestimated. Among all major league hitters with 2000 plate appearances since 2005, Cedeno’s OBP ranks fourth-lowest. The three ahead of (behind?) him are Miguel Olivo, Corey Patterson and Adam Everett. Olivo has significantly more power, Patterson outslugs Cedeno and brings a lot more speed, and Everett was one of the best defensive shortstops in baseball-yet his offensive ineptitude knocked him out of the league.

The argument for Cedeno seems to boil down to: sure, he can’t hit. But lots of backup middle infielders can’t hit, and his defense is good enough to make him worth having around. And I can see that, to an extent. After all, this is a team that once paid nearly twice what Cedeno makes annually for the right to have Alex Cora not hit and not field.

But “better than Alex Cora” really shouldn’t be the standard for a signing. And my bigger fear is that Terry Collins will decide to play Cedeno regularly at second base, rather than giving Daniel Murphy a chance to learn the position. Let’s be clear about this: we don’t know whether Murphy can handle the position. Don’t know. That’s very different than knowing that he can’t. And we do know that if he can even minimally handle the position defensively, his bat makes him one of the better second basemen in the league.

That’s a far cry from Cedeno, who is entering his age-29 season, and clearly isn’t ever going to hit enough to allow his fielding to elevate him beyond the point of backup. I’m also simply not convinced that any number of defensively strong Triple-A middle infielders couldn’t have filled this job for less money. But those savings would have been negligible.

In summary, this signing is okay. But how I feel about it will ultimately be judged by how many at-bats Cedeno steals from Daniel Murphy at second base.

In a solid move sure to warm the cockles of my heart- I enjoy a fourth outfielder more than most- the Mets are bringing back Scott Hairston on a one-year deal worth a reported $1.1 million, if Jon Heyman is to be believed (and why wouldn’t you?).

I liked the move for Hairston last year, and I like it this year. He can play all three outfield positions, or even hold down the fort at second base, hardly a position of strength for the Mets at the moment.

One reason I particularly wanted Hairston last year was his unsustainably bad .236 batting average on balls in play. Interestingly, largely by raising that number to .264, he raised his slash line from .210/.295/.346 to .235/.303/.470. That took him from unacceptable production to really good fourth outfielder production. Truth be told, his 112 OPS+ makes him a reasonable alternative to get more playing time in 2012, given the alternatives the Mets have ready to play the outfield right now.

Worth pointing out: his career BABIP is .277, suggesting some bad luck even last year (though his line drive was down a bit). But his home runs per fly ball rate was elevated in 2011, so regression there should leave him in about the same place in 2012 as he was in 2011.

Which, to circle back, makes him a good signing for $1.1 million. The Mets are better today for adding Hairston.

Happy new year, LoHud Mets Blog folks! We’re only about seven weeks out from spring training, but the Mets have plenty to do between now and then. And no, not just find a bunch of minority partners.

To that end, the Mets signed Omar Quintanilla to a contract Tuesday. This makes a lot more sense than signing Jack Wilson, someone the Mets were reportedly interested in.

Both players provide defensive cover at multiple infield positions. But Quintanilla is much younger than Wilson, has a minor league hitting track record that suggests a surprisingly good offensive season is at least possible, and is much less expensive. With Wilson, you’d probably be paying well over a million dollars for similar defense and offense, and almost no breakout possibility.

The move I wish they’d made happened a bit to the south, with Rick Peterson joining the Orioles as organization-wide pitching coach. Peterson got results with the Mets who followed his plan, while taking blame for things that weren’t his doing (think the responsibility for Victor Zambrano/Scott Kazmir swap) while getting undermined (pitchers were told they could ignore his program, making his presence moot).

In a dysfunctional Baltimore situation, Peterson may have trouble succeeding. But if he’s given true autonomy over pitcher development, I’m confident the Orioles will be better for it.

More to come as the Mets add their remaining players. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Prince Fielder.

The king of prospects weighs in on the Mets.

There’s ample reason for optimism here, especially on the pitching side. It is important not to figure on any particular prospect, especially a pitcher. So it is less the impressive reports on Wheeler, Familia and Harvey, and more that all three of them exist simultaneously.

To me, the only thing mitigating optimism over Sandy Alderson’s overhauling of the farm system is the question of how much he’ll be able to spend on next year’s draft. For all their financial problems, the Wilpon group allowed Alderson to go over slot on a bunch of picks-Philip Evans’ presence in the team’s top 20 is just one result. But cutting corner could affect any aspect of the team’s expenditures. And with greater penalties for going over slot from the new collective bargaining agreement, even the same financial situation could produce additional restrictions from above.

That said, there are plenty of minor leaguers to track, and the management team understands that rushing them would be foolish, no matter the struggles at higher levels.

http://mobile.minorleagueball.com/2011/12/27/2664351/new-york-mets-top-20-prospects-for-2012

For those who haven’t seen on Twitter: @ThePhillyPhans is reporting that David Wright is going to be with the Phillies “very, very soon”.

Let me tell you what I know.

I know little about that site. This isn’t to disparage it- I just can’t vouch in any way for the site.

None of the sources I trust have anything on this yet. At the moment, no one is rushing to deny it. But there’s nothing to corroborate so far.

I’m about to pack it in for the holiday weekend. So I refuse to believe I’m about to deal with the aftermath of the Mets giving their fans a present to coincide with both Christmas and Chanukah of dealing David Wright.

Or I’ll put it another way: I’m going to need a lot more information than this to entertain the notion.

The deal is rumored to involve Domonic Brown. He’d be a nice fit. It isn’t out of line with the baseball deals and notions being put forth by this team- that is, building for the long-term. Wright just turned 29, and is only signed through 2012 (with an option for 2013).

Obviously, a Wright deal saves ownership a lot of money: $15 million next year alone.

Anyhow, that’s what I know. I don’t care if it is midnight on Christmas, I’ll update this blog if anything develops on the Wright front. That’s an especially easy thing for me to promise, since I’m Jewish, and used to working newsrooms on Christmas in exchange for getting covered on Yom Kippur.

But as of right now, that’s the only trade I can report.

Happy holidays, and cross your fingers.

Good morning! I trust you’ve digested the pair of financial stories. Rich Sandomir does a tremendous job on A1 of the New York Times detailing the perks owners could receive for a minority ownership stake, from quality time with Mr. Met to access to luxury suites that would otherwise be occupied by Lady Gaga. And the New York Post reported that the Mets will shut down a minor league team in the Gulf Coast League to save some money.

Short take on these: the Sandomir story lays bare just how little the team has to offer a prospective minority buyer. The Post story reinforces that while the Mets are cutting costs at the major league level, they are also cutting costs below, not reinvesting that money. Nothing new, per se, but both provide illuminating details about the crisis. Sandomir, in particular, is fantastic on those details.

But the big story yesterday was about the team’s interest in Eric Young, Jr.  The rumored deal would send Justin Turner to Colorado.

Let’s be clear: this is a win for the Mets if it happens. A simple comparison of skills makes this obvious.

Eric Young Jr.: ability to play second base, all three outfield spots at below-average levels, speed, patience

Justin Turner: ability to play second base, third base at below-average levels, small amount of power

Don’t know about you, but I’ll take the first set of skills over the second, especially given the team’s lack of backup outfield options, and David Wright at third base.

At least, that’s the only reason I can see for them to pursue Luis Martinez, the catcher recently designated for assignment by the San Diego Padres.

Martinez, 26, is right-handed, has no power whatsoever, and can hit for a decent average and control the strike zone, particularly against lefties. He’d make a perfect platoon for Thole, is what you wanted is a guy who had exactly Thole’s skills, no more, no less, just in mirror image.

I still don’t really understand why nothing was budgeted toward getting the Mets a backup catcher with a little power who could crush lefties, but Jon Rauch was deemed more important, so there’s no money left for a Kelly Shoppach-type. (That was only $1.35 million to the Red Sox, incidentally. Oh, well.)

While I have you here, I strongly encourage you to check out this site on your mobile device. Thanks to the magical James Kwansik, you’ll be glad you did. The site has been optimized for such things.

As you’ve probably heard by now, I have a new book out. It’s called Wilpon’s Folly, and it tells the story of Fred Wilpon, Bernie Madoff, how the Mets arrived at this legal/financial point, and what to expect going forward. I spend many hours poring over documents, talking to principals in and experts on the case, and I’m very proud of the work that resulted.

The Mets have responded in the time-honored way they respond when unable to deny something: character attack. That’s okay- they have a rich history of going after journalists who report something they subsequently have to admit.

The shame of it is, my strong preference is to write about a baseball team, not a legal struggle and financial death spiral. But as I’ve pointed out before, talking about the state of the Mets right now without factoring in their legal/financial struggles is like diagnosing the health of a patient while ignoring a gunshot wound. It just doesn’t make sense, doesn’t do anyone any good, and provides inaccurate analysis through omission.

That the story is also a fascinating one helps to make this work somewhat more enjoyable; but it isn’t work I sought, and I take no pleasure from writing about the decline and fall of anyone. As to the accuracy of the work, I would encourage anyone to read my work and decide for yourself, whether it is my book, my other reporting on this, or even the case I make for a particular trade/free agent signing. A writer who simply falls back on his qualifications, instead of making the persuasive argument, is a lazy writer. And when a response is a character attack, as opposed to a response to a specific raised, it’s a pretty obvious diversionary tactic.

More in a bit on Gio Gonzalez, but I felt I would be remiss not to mention this.

Color me skeptical that anyone, Sandy Alderson included, can build a winning team in 2012 with the extremely limiting financial parameters currently facing the Mets.

But if anyone can, it’s Alderson.

He needs pitching depth, as previously discussed. And he needs to do it with minor league free agents. So as targets go, Chuck James is a good bet.

James pitched to a 2.30 ERA in Triple-A last season, a 2.32 ERA in 2010. He split time between starting and relieving, so he fits the swingman who can be sent down that Alderson described earlier this week. And the price is right: no guaranteed MLB contract or spot on the 40-man roster necessary.

James is also left-handed, so if he doesn’t provide help as a starter or long reliever, he can be another lefty out of the pen. One warning, though: his MLB stats suggest he has no platoon advantage, so tread carefully on making him a second Tim Byrdak.

This isn’t signing Jose Reyes or Yu Darvish. But it is maxing out the things Alderson can do, and that story shouldn’t be lost due to the financial storm.

Just confirmed from the Mets that the team did not place a bid in the sealed bidding process for Nippon Ham Fighters hurler Yu Darvish.

Hey, it never hurts to ask.

Darvish, who projects as a frontline starting pitcher, presumably exceeded the team’s remaining player budget, which is [THIS SPACE FOR SALE].

No word from the Mets on exactly how much they didn’t bid.  The Yankees, true to form, reportedly did.

More on this story as it develops, which it won’t, since the Mets didn’t bid.