Latest NY Mets roster move is insulting to Pete Alonso and the team's philosophy

Depth is fine. However, when the theme of the team you’re building is all about run prevention, adding the player who made the most errors at his position last year kind of spits in the face of this strategy. The New York Mets did precisely this with Monday’s depth move of claiming Eric Wagaman off of waivers.

There’s no such thing as too much depth, especially with Wagaman when you can (and they already have) optioned him to the minors. But with a NL-leading 10 errors at first base last year and two major league seasons with an OAA totaling -5 spread across the four corner positions, he’s hardly the kind of flier who matches well with what we were told the Mets’ focus was.

The Eric Wagaman addition goes against a lot of what we thought the Mets believed in

The Mets made another somewhat, but less so, curious move this week when they DFA’d Tommy Pham in favor of signing Austin Slater. Slater hit .174 with the Miami Marlins prior to his DFA. Is it an upgrade? Measured against Pham, it is.

Slater has hit well against lefties in the past, but so has Pham. Slater could be just as cooked as the league’s best fantasy football rules enforcer. While right-handed hitters Cristian Pache with a .417 batting average against southpaws and Nick Morabito at .370 remain in Syracuse, the Mets have opted to go with a more consistently proven hitter in Slater even while letting the other pair remain in the minors.

When David Stearns uttered the words “run prevention” we figured that was first and foremost the most important quality for them. It helped justify letting Pete Alonso walk in free agency. The negative discussions around the Mets, first base being a huge question mark from the start, continue to get challenged with every decision they make in-season. The Wagaman decision is one of the latest even if it’s probably mostly meaningless.

In his one major league season, Wagaman did hit lefties well. A .283/.321/.462 slash line against them, he has spent all of this year in Triple-A hitting .159 overall. Versatile without much power or defensive skills, this is one of those filler additions we can scratch our heads about because of how quickly the Mets have changed direction in practically every way, even with as minor of choices as a minor league depth addition.

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