NY Mets front office deserves blame if the season slips away

After having a modest lead in the National League East just three weeks ago, the New York Mets had a disaster of a week – losing a series against the Cincinnati Reds, dropped three of four against the Miami Marlins, and getting swept by the Philadelphia Phillies – pushing them back to third place in the division behind the Phillies and Atlanta Braves.

Even as the Mets maintained a modest lead, the cracks in the foundation were beginning to show. Injuries depleted their depth in the upper minors, New York had to go and acquire Rich Hill and Trevor Williams for potential starts, and the bats, supposedly the highlight of the team heading into the season, had numerous instances of going cold. All baseball teams have ebbs and flow throughout the season, but the New York Mets felt like a team teetering on the edge.

In the end, the Mets made a trade at the deadline, acquiring Javy Baez and Williams from Chicago, but that’s about it. A bullpen clamoring for another arm or two received nothing, a rotation that could use a difference-maker, someone like Jose Berrios, got their low-level adds, and a team that could’ve used two bats, one to start and maybe one to come off the bench for some life, got a good one, but not a great one.

With Jacob deGrom out an additional two weeks, Noah Syndergaard moving into the bullpen when he returns, the continuous slugging bats, and no real help on the way from the farm system, the Mets look on the verge of missing the playoffs. To make things worse, it’s not like the Phillies or Braves are world beaters, either, just teams who’ve done just enough at the deadline – Philadelphia adding Kyle Gibson from Texas, Atlanta adding a litany of good enough players – to leapfrog New York.

The place you have to point to is the front office. There’s blame for everyone really, Luis Rojas has struggled in his first full season as manager of the Mets, the players have all experienced poor seasons, especially on the hitting side. However, when you look at where the Mets were last season and where they are today, a proper offseason would’ve allowed the Mets to not only sustain when injuries hit but preserve and even strengthen their lead in the National League East.

I think it’s time to relitigate New York’s 2020 offseason and where it went wrong for the New York Mets.

The strengthening of the Mets front office

When Mets owner Steve Cohen purchased the Mets, the thought process was that New York would evolve into a “Dodgers East,” a team that just won the World Series weeks prior. While the Dodgers are lauded for the recent decade of dominance, one of their biggest strengths is their ability to leverage their finances and success into numerous talented front office members, who do their time and wistfully leave for bigger opportunities.

The Mets bought back Sandy Alderson in a President of Baseball Operations spot, Jared Porter was hired as the general manager and Zack Scott was the assistant GM. Instead of building the front office, the Mets focused on remodeling their pitching development philosophy, but the Mets kept their front office moves largely small.

Porter was fired amid sexual misconduct (we’ll come back to this later), and Scott was moving into an “acting general manager” role.

The bigger mistake was not strengthening the office even more. In retrospect, the Mets probably should’ve looked for Kim Ng, currently the general manager of the Miami Marlins, over Porter. On top of that, the Mets should’ve been more proactive with hiring more baseball people. Before leaving, Billy Eppler, let go by the Los Angeles Angeles, was a prominent figure in the New York Yankees’ farm system. Michael Hill, now working for Major League Baseball, would’ve assisted in this effort.

And it’s also fair to point out that building a “Dodgers East” just isn’t realistic. With the ability to leverage the draft, the ability to be ahead of the curve in the international draft, the Dodgers are miles ahead and the philosophy and strategy are too broad for the Mets to follow. It would take a few years to get the proper people in place, let alone begin to see the proper benefits on the major league roster.

Instead, the Mets front office is wide open and the philosophy seems murky. Are the Mets a team that wants to continue the focus of starting pitching, specifically, players who have the upside of a top-of-the-rotation arm? Or does New York begin to focus on a more hitter-orientated approach, using assets and allocate resources towards finding premium hitting?

The best front offices are the ones who can do both, but it’s not always possible. The Chicago Cubs, when they won the World Series in 2016, built a strong stable of hitters and traded for their top pitchers. Same for the Astros, who have now begun to develop decent middle-of-the-rotation starters (Luis Garcia, Jose Urquidy, Framber Vasquez) in recent years.

Teams constantly shuffle their process, but you have a starting point. The Mets don’t really have one at the moment.

With Alderson now 73 years old and Scott still working with the “acting general manager” tag, the Mets look to enter next offseason with the daunting task of doing it all over again, looking for high-level people among baseball to take over and build the next great Mets team, which could mean going through another offseason taking calls and interviews on prominent front office members and changing the philosophy instead of stabilizing the roster and focusing on other matters.

McCann, Bauer and the Toronto Blue Jays: How the Mets fumbled free agency

As the 2021 regular season continues, it’s tough to look back at the 2020 offseason and say the Mets did a good job. You can’t be completely out, however. The Francisco Lindor trade was beautiful and netted them a top-tier shortstop and a solid rotation starter in Carlos Carrasco.

Taijuan Walker, currently pitching like a number five starter, pitched like a number three starter, en route to an All-Star appearance. And though most of it is injured, the Mets did a good job restocking their pipeline with pitching options, adding Walker, Trevor May, Aaron Loup, Joey Luchessi, Jordan Yamamoto, Sean Reid-Foley, and Yennsy Díaz. Arms of various levels for a team that has failed to develop many bullpen arms over the last decade.

However, you start to see the very large cracks in the failure of the offseason.

The biggest miss on the hitting side was George Springer. Springer has dealt with injuries, but he has mashed with the Toronto Blue Jays, batting .269/.362/.610 with 14 home runs in 49 games. His bat slots right into the middle of the order and moving him to centerfield, Brandon Nimmo to leftfield, and Michael Conforto to right would’ve fixed a porous Mets defense. The same goes for Marcus Semien, also with Toronto, who would’ve done the same thing for New York at third base.

The Mets also missed on an elite closer – Liam Hendriks. Yes, Edwin Diaz had a great 2020 season, but Hendriks is not only better but fits a rare occurrence on the free-agent market – a clear elite talent without a qualifying offer. Adding Diaz to New York’s bullpen not only pushes Diaz into a set-up role but eases the burden of the likes of Seth Lugo, Aaron Loup, and Trevor May. Instead, Hendriks is a part of an elite bullpen in Chicago.

I also think the Mets weren’t aggressive enough in the trade market. With Noah Syndergaard returning from Tommy John surgery, there was a need for another top of the rotation arm. Yu Darvish, who had an elite season with the Chicago Cubs last season, is continuing his solid run with the San Diego Padres, who acquired him and Victor Caratini for four high upside prospects.

In retrospect, the combination of Jacob deGrom, Yu Darvish, and Marcus Stroman gives the Mets one of the better rotations in the National League and takes some of the pressure off of other starters. Suddenly, Taijuan Walker’s decline doesn’t matter as much, Carlos Carrasco isn’t rushed back and Tylor Megill’s rise is a good story, but he’s more of a sixth starter than a relied upon starter.

Where the Mets did fail is the addition of James McCann and the heavy pursuit of Trevor Bauer. Now on administrative leave, Bauer instead signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers and would’ve brought his own collection of issues on and off the field. Let’s say the Mets dodged a bullet on that one, even though they banked their entire offseason on signing him.

McCann was a mistake. The Mets banked on McCann’s bat from 2019 (149wRC+, .289/.360/.536) instead of his previous five seasons where he failed to eclipse a 100 wRC+ in four of the five years and didn’t sport an on-base percentage above .340 in any season and it burned them. Now, the Mets not only have to find a valuable backup, but they’ll have to do it while McCann sits on the roster for the next three seasons.

It’s fair to view this as hindsight, but the Mets needed talent. The farm system was always shallow and the Mets, due to poor development, had weak upper minor depth. New York should’ve leveraged their finances into better players and more importantly, need to be aggressive with good players without qualifying offers, like Semien and Hendriks.

The Mets have a ton of talent and should once again be one of the big players in free agency, even as Robinson Cano and his bloated contract returns on the books. With several needs and several important players on the roster reaching free agency, the Mets will have to balance bringing back their own talent with an infusion of new free agents who can help turn the tide in Queens.