SO IT turns out that someone has detected an upside to the calamities that have turned the economy to oatmeal.
Good for the Mets.
HARDBALL AT THE WINTER MEETINGS
A few months ago, before the Dow started modeling itself on the old parachute ride at Coney Island, Paul Kinzer, the man who represents Francisco Rodriguez, dreamed of getting as much as five years and $75 million for K-Rod, who seemed to pick the perfect year to collect 62 saves, more than any closer in history.
And with a big-market team such as the Mets in such obvious bullpen peril – specifically needing ninth-inning help – it seemed Kinzer would have the perfect patsy with deep pockets to pony up a fortune. But Wall Street imploded, and baseball’s limitless money well dried up, and so the Mets get K-Rod for a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the commitment.
It is impossible to argue with this three-year, $37 million deal from the Mets’ perspective, especially if you watched the nightly ninth-inning adventures after Billy Wagner’s elbow turned to linguini.
You can make all the cautionary K-Rod arguments you want, and they are all fair: His velocity is down; he too often mimics Wagner’s Houdini-like ninth-inning escapes; the Angels, one of the sport’s smart franchises, bid his 62 saves farewell even though it turns out he wouldn’t have broken anyone’s bank. All fair points. But the overriding truth is this: The second this deal is done, the Mets will be better off in the ninth inning than they were the second before the ink was dry.
Emphasis on the ninth inning.
Because there is still an awful lot of heavy lifting left for the Mets, who saw just as many games evaporate in the seventh and eighth innings last year as in the ninth, who still have too many single-side specialists such as Joe Smith and Pedro Feliciano on the roster, along with too many of the arsonists responsible for so many of last year’s most unforgivable flops.
So in many ways, signing Rodriguez is the easy part. The greater challenge now is identifying and acquiring the men bridging him and the starting rotation. Right now, Met officials seem intent on obtaining a starting pitcher (with Met killer Randy Wolf a likely target) and investigating help in left field, while simultaneously trying to rid themselves of Luis Castillo’s anvil-like contract and Scott Schoeneweis’ boo-and-bile-magnet presence.
And, all the while, figuring out how to pry Huston Street away from Colorado, or securing Brandon Lyon’s signature to a contract, since it’s highly unlikely they can pull off a K-Rod/Brian Fuentes parlay coup. Either would be a significant upgrade, either will provide the back-end story of the K-Rod deal. And the Mets surely need one of them reporting to Port St. Lucie in two months.
It is good to see the Mets are still capable of flexing fiscal muscle while other teams queue up on baseball’s bread line. But it won’t mean nearly as much if another few dozen leads evaporate before K-Rod even begins to stretch.