ORLANDO, Fla. — In three years running the Mets, Sandy Alderson has enjoyed more room for error than many general managers receive in a whole career. Frank Francisco? Shaun Marcum? Brandon Lyon? They’re all nothing more than noise, temporary workers hired to bide time until the Mets regained the tiniest semblance of financial flexibility.
Having written that, there’s one area in which Alderson needed to thrive to provide his long-suffering fan base with a foundation of hope, and so far, so good on the sell-high trades of Carlos Beltran (to San Francisco in 2011) and R.A. Dickey (to Toronto in 2012). Beltran brought back Zack Wheeler, who encouraged in his big-league debut last season, while Dickey begat catcher Travis d’Arnaud and stud minor-league pitcher Noah Syndergaard as well as big-league receiver John Buck, who joined bargain find Marlon Byrd in an August trade to Pittsburgh that further replenished the Mets’ youth brigade.
And now comes a dramatically different arena where Alderson and his deputies must connect. In which failure could be catastrophic to the organization’s future.
The Mets must hit big on the high-stakes free-agent market the same way they did with their high-profile trades.
“If you think about it, we were essentially representing a free agent in those trades, if you look at it that way,” Alderson said Tuesday at the general managers’ meetings. “Not surprisingly, what agents typically do is, they’re patient. But we can’t afford to be patient all of the time.
“There may be similarities, but I don’t think how we approached those deals necessarily represents how we’ll approach some free-agent signings this offseason.”
We already have a feel for the sort of game the Mets will be hunting this winter: Not the biggest. Jacoby Ellsbury and Shin-Soo Choo are out, despite the Mets’ obvious need for outfield help. They also very likely won’t be engaging in the high-level starting pitching market that features Matt Garza, Ubaldo Jimenez, Ervin Santana and Japanese right-hander Masahiro Tanaka.
No, the Mets’ speed will be more along the lines of shortstop Jhonny Peralta, Yankees outfielder Curtis Granderson and a buy-low starting pitcher like the Yankees’ Phil Hughes. Granderson told MLB Network on Tuesday his top priority is to join a winning team, which is interesting since two non-winning teams, the Mets and the Cubs, could top his list of suitors. The White Sox, also representing Granderson’s hometown of Chicago, seem likely to pass, as they’re looking for building blocks younger than Granderson’s 33 by Opening Day 2014.
The Mets’ trades of Beltran and Dickey rank among the better “Sell a veteran” deals that have gone down in the last three years. You also give high grades to the Rays’ sales of starting pitchers Matt Garza (to the Cubs) and James Shields (to Kansas City) and Oakland’s trades of Trevor Cahill (to Arizona) and Gio Gonzalez (to Washington), Milwaukee’s trade of Zack Greinke (to the Angels) and the Cubs’ deal of Garza (to Texas). Tampa Bay, Oakland and Milwaukee all faced similar pressures to deliver on their deals, as they all face financial pressure similar to that of the Mets — although, of course, those derive from market size and stadium problems rather than ownership wealth.
However, trades of this kind are easier to pull off than signing a free agent because the trading team has all of the information in front of it. There’s no flying blind as there can be in free agency, when you don’t always know which other clubs are involved and how much they’re bidding. You also are committing significant dollars to a player you probably won’t know very well.
Alderson has barely dipped into the free-agent market while running the Mets; his only eight-figure investment, Francisco, turned into a colossal bust, while Byrd became his greatest buy-low triumph. These next eight-figure investments have to produce, or else the Mets can find themselves right back in the mess — handcuffed by the contracts for Jason Bay and Johan Santana — from which they just escaped.
The improvement of the farm system under Alderson, through trades, international signings and the amateur draft, means these Mets possess some hope, even with Matt Harvey down for all of 2014 as he rehabilitates from Tommy John surgery. It means a run at .500, armed with those free agents they hope to obtain — or a bat acquired in a trade (the Angels’ Mark Trumbo?) with some of their young pitching — isn’t impossible.
The Mets are desperate to regain relevance, to win back some of their many disenchanted fans. The reservoir of patience, the room for error, has each pretty much dried up. The same people who made the Beltran and Dickey trades will now be charged with picking the right free agents. The bar is raised, but the Mets must soar just as high.