Rebuilding the NY Mets in 5 moves this offseason

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There's still a month and a half left until the end of baseball's regular season, and fans of the New York Mets are all channeling Green Day lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong when he sang, "Wake me up when September ends."

The offseason can't come soon enough, not only to put an end to the months-long torture that Mets fans have endured, but to turn the page to a better future. Steve Cohen's commitment to winning can't be questioned, but unlike last offseason, this winter's moves need to be the correct ones.

We searched high and low throughout history and pop culture to find the "moves" that could get the Mets back on the right track this offseason. This year has been anything but fun, but hopefully these moves can give Mets fans a smile and a little dose of hope before next season.

Mets offseason move #1: The Queens Gambit

Yes, we know there's supposed to be an apostrophe in there, but the Flushing-based Mets are making it their own. In chess, the Queen's Gambit is an aggressive opening favored by attacking players that involves sacrificing a pawn to gain control of the board.

How does this relate to the Mets? Glad you asked. The team has struggled all year on offense, ranking 20th in the majors in runs scored per game, and much of that can be attributed to a lack of aggression at the plate.

No player on the Mets roster embodies that passiveness more than Daniel Vogelbach. Only two players in the majors swing at a lower percentage of first pitches, which is why last year's fan favorite acquisition has seen a massive dip in popularity with every grooved fastball he watches go by.

Vogelbach's contract is over at the end of this season, and the Mets front office should let him walk. Instead, bring in a player who puts the ball in play.

Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. is that player. The Diamondbacks left fielder is an aggressive contact hitter, ranking in the 91st percentile in whiff % according to baseballsavant.com. The 2023 All-Star can plug into the spot vacated by Mark Canha and Tommy Pham, and though he's not a burner on the basepaths, he also won't grind things to a halt the way Vogelbach does.

Gurriel's average is 21 points lower this year than his career average, but the advanced stats suggest that this is just an anomaly, as he ranks in the top quarter in the league in hard hit %. More importantly, swapping out Vogelbach for Gurriel would represent a change in the Mets' philosophy, signaling a shift to a more aggressive approach that is a better fit for today's game.

Gurriel is an unrestricted free agent after this season, and the Mets should make it a priority to sign him. Who knows, maybe Anya Taylor-Joy can throw out the first pitch next year?

Mets offseason move #2: The Malachi Crunch

Who said hours of watching Nick at Nite as a kid wouldn't pay off? The Malachi Crunch is a demolition derby finishing maneuver executed by the Malachi brothers in Happy Days in which they crush their opponent's car by attacking it from both sides at once.

The Mets can execute a Malachi Crunch of their own by pursuing Josh Hader of the Padres when he hits free agency this year. Hader is the best left-handed reliever in the game, and pairing him with a healthy Edwin Diaz in 2024 would crush the competition from both sides, creating the best lefty-righty bullpen tandem the game has seen in years.

The Mets relief situation is in need of help after trading away David Robertson to the Marlins, but even before that trade, Robertson wasn't enough to keep the Mets bullpen from being one of the worst in the league. As of today, Mets relievers have the sixth-worst ERA in the majors, but adding Hader and getting Diaz back would instantly lock down the eighth and ninth innings.

The Mets have lost far too many leads this season, something that just didn't happen in 2022. Hader has an ERA under 1 this year, and he's given up only 17 hits and one home run in 44 appearances. Imagine Hader and Diaz together? Opponents won't know what hit them.

Mets offseason move #3: The Rod Tidwell

Does the name Rod Tidwell ring a bell? If, like me, you're a fan of sports and movies, it should. Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s character from Jerry Maguire lives on in large part due to four simple words:

Show me the money.

The Mets have locked up the core of their team for the foreseeable future. Francisco Lindor, Brandon Nimmo, Edwin Diaz, and Jeff McNeil are all inked to multi-year deals. Francisco Alvarez doesn't hit arbitration until 2027. That leaves one indispensable player whose future in Flushing isn't guaranteed, and there's an argument to be made that he's the best of the bunch.

Pete Alonso needs to be extended yesterday. Though he's under contract for one more year, it would be a bad look to have him play out a lame duck season and then hit the open market, especially for an owner as deep-pocketed as Steve Cohen.

Alonso is arguably the best power hitter in the game, and he's been a Met his entire career. The Polar Bear and his lovable meathead persona are the heartbeat of the organization, no matter how many unnamed sources supposedly speak to WFAN to slander him in the shadows.

Even in a down year, Alonso is going to end the season with 40+ homers and 100+ RBIs. Do we have to get Tom Cruise involved? He should be able to help, but Steve Cohen needs to take care of this one on his own.

Tidwell has a word in the movie that sums up Alonso's situation perfectly: quan. "What's the quan?" Jerry Maguire asks him. "It means love, respect, and community, and the dollars too. The entire package," Tidwell replies. Alonso has done everything this organization could possibly ask of him. Give him his quan, and show him the money.

Mets offseason move #4: The Red Wedding

OK, here's a big one. George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, which later became the Game of Thrones TV show, became known for its shocking twists and unsentimental treatment of its supposed main characters, often killing them off in violent and horrific ways.

At no time was this better epitomized than in Martin's most astonishing move, known as "The Red Wedding." If you're one of the four people that hasn't read or watched the series, you might want to skip to #5.

The Red Wedding saw the betrayal and slaughter of Robb and Catelyn Stark, plus most of their leading bannermen and allies. It's one of the most shocking moments in pop culture history, and it reshuffled the deck to create new villains and new paths for two of the remaining heroes, Arya and Sansa.

The Mets also need to reshuffle the deck and wipe the slate clean. The coaching staff needs to go.

For a while now I've believed that pitching coach Jeremy Hefner and hitting coach Jeremy Barnes should be on their way out. The Mets' ERA is nearly a full run worse than it was last year, and that's with the addition of the since-departed Justin Verlander. Kodai Senga and Brooks Raley are the only two pitchers still on the team that don't make the vein in my head twitch when they take the mound, and that falls on Hefner.

The offense is scoring .41 runs per game less than last year, and it seems no hitter on the team has improved upon their 2022 production. Barnes is in his first year on the job after succeeding now-bench coach Eric Chavez, and the team's approach has suffered as they've taken too many pitches and failed to drive in runners from scoring position.

Put this all together and the Mets are 1.38 runs worse per game than last year. In a league where so many games can be decided by the slimmest of margins, that's a massive number.

The Red Wedding didn't stop at two people, though. Seeing Robb Stark, the King in the North and the best hope to take down the Lannisters, taking multiple crossbow bolts to the chest was one of television's most tragic moments, but it was self-inflicted, as he had broken a promise of marriage to the daughter of Walder Frey, the man that presided over his death.

Buck Showalter, who I've defended during his entire tenure with the Mets, likewise has nobody to blame but himself. The team has lacked a spark since late May, and not once has Showalter used his position to rouse the team from the doldrums. Each postgame press conference after a loss has been filled with the same empty platitudes, the same bits of hollow praise for a team that hasn't earned them.

Steve Cohen has stated repeatedly that he soon intends to hire a President of Baseball Operations. The rumored man for the job is David Stearns, formerly of the Milwaukee Brewers. If Cohen makes that happen, it's inevitable that Stearns will want his own guy at the head of the table. Whether that's Brewers manager Craig Counsell, Eric Chavez, or someone else, the faint strains of The Rains of Castamere you hear mean it's certain that it won't be Buck.

The Lannisters send their regards.

Mets offseason move #5: The Meiji Restoration

The Meiji Restoration was the most prosperous period in Japanese history, in which power was once again consolidated around the emperor, and the country rapidly industrialized while incorporating Western ideas. This led to a boom in technology and military might, putting Japan on equal footing with the other powers of the world.

The Mets need to undergo a Meiji Restoration of their own. Allow me to explain.

Major League Baseball has seen many Japanese baseball players achieve great success. Ichiro Suzuki, Hideo Nomo, Hideki Matsui, and Yu Darvish are four names that spring immediately to mind. For too long, though, those names were seen as anomalies, outliers that belied the fact that Japanese players, by and large, weren't on the same level as Americans.

The ascension of Shohei Ohtani into the pantheon of baseball's greatest players of all-time has opened the floodgates to the idea that Japan may be hiding more talent that can play, and thrive, at the top level. Kodai Senga has been one of the Mets' lone bright spots in his rookie year, while Masataka Yoshida of the Boston Red Sox has also impressed in his freshman campaign.

Japan's thrilling win in the World Baseball Classic wasn't achieved against college players or minor leaguers. They beat the best players in the world from the U.S., Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and other baseball hotbeds. In a storybook, and perhaps allegorical ending, Japan's best player, Ohtani, struck out the U.S.'s best player, Mike Trout.

As it stands, Ohtani is in a lost situation with the Los Angeles Angels. The team hasn't reached the playoffs since 2014, and its trade deadline shopping spree has done nothing but mortgage part of the franchise's future. It seems almost certain that Ohtani will leave this offseason.

Steve Cohen needs to do whatever it takes to get Ohtani to Queens, and the number will be considerable. Not only that, star Japanese pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto is said to be high on the Mets' priority list. By signing Ohtani and Yamamoto to go with Senga, the Mets could herald themselves as the pipeline for Japan's greatest players.

The Mets do have experience with Japanese players, having once employed the services of Tsuyoshi Shinjo, Masato Yoshii, Kaz Matsui, and Daisuke Matsuzaka, but snagging Ohtani and Yamamoto would, like the Meiji Restoration, concentrate Japanese power in a way the world has not yet seen.

Ohtani is thought to prefer the West Coast, which is closer to Japan and has a higher Japanese population, but what if the Mets created the most Japanese-friendly organization in Major League Baseball? Ohtani is already baseball's biggest star, but he could reach a new stratosphere in New York while still benefiting from the presence of his fellow countrymen.

This move could be the best indicator yet that MLB teams see Japanese talent as a viable way to compete for a World Series, and the Mets could be on the vanguard. Focusing the team's identity around Ohtani would be Steve Cohen's biggest move yet.

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