The image of Angel Pagan celebrating a World Series title, late Sunday night, is as good a place as any to launch a discussion of the Mets’ offseason.
The Mets’ trade of Pagan to San Francisco last December, for Ramon Ramirez and Andres Torres, was a bad one — which makes Sandy Alderson one of 30 general managers who has a transaction gone wrong on his ledger. The problem with the Mets, however, is that they’re still operating like a middle-market team, which means they don’t have much room for this sort of error.
Combine their modest budget with their large ambitions — they want to contend very soon — and it puts the Mets in quite a pickle. They still have neither the organizational depth to execute a significant trade without impacting the major-league team nor the dollars to compete with the big boys in free agency.
So Alderson and his lieutenants must better utilize the Moneyball principles that landed them with the Mets in the first place. Here are five players who could fit their needs:
MELKY CABRERA
Yup. Let’s go there right at the start. The Mets need to be creative, take risks and buy low. Who better illustrates these values than the man whom the Giants loathed so much they essentially declared, “We’d rather lose without you than win with you”?
We can’t know precisely what sort of player Cabrera will be now that he has been suspended for a positive test for illegal performance-enhancing drugs. We don’t know when he started using them. We won’t know whether he’ll try them again.
So why go after a guy with so many unknowns? Because there is a paucity of quality outfielders, Cabrera’s price figures to be reasonable (perhaps one year at $3 million, The Post’s Joel Sherman reported) and he’s a switch-hitter with New York experience who played extensive center field — to mixed reviews, admittedly — as recently as 2011.
Moreover, given his experience in Web design, maybe Melky could help out the Mets’ IT department as a bonus.
RANDY CHOATE
Since the Mets presumably won’t be players in the Rafael Soriano market, and given Frank Francisco’s shaky first year in a Mets uniform, the club should go forward with a “closer by committee” plan and tell manager Terry Collins and pitching coach Dan Warthen their job is to get folks like Francisco, Bobby Parnell and Josh Edgin to buy into this.
The Mets have a young lefty in Edgin who has displayed the potential of succeeding against right-handed as well as left-handed hitters. Adding a second lefty would give Collins another weapon, and Choate, 37, is as good and durable a lefty-killer as anyone else out there; he pitched in 80 games for the Marlins and Dodgers last year and limited lefties to a .158 batting average, .243 on-base percentage and .218 slugging percentage. He started his career in the Yankees’ organization and likes New York.
A.J. PIERZYSNKI
The Yankees’ Russell Martin might be too expensive for the Mets’ tastes, so Pierzynski, 36 in December, might be a better financial fit. His excellent 2012 (a career high 27 homers) looks like an outlier offensively, yet even if he regressed to his 2011 numbers (eight homers and 29 doubles), he’d represent a significant upgrade over Josh Thole. Plus he would bring some New York chutzpah the Mets could badly use.
SHANE VICTORINO
The center fielder’s free-agent market is tough to peg at this point. He’s coming of his worst season since 2007 and turns 32 in November. But he still steals bases (he was a terrific 39-for-45 with the Phillies and Dodgers in 2012) and fields well. If he falls down to the Mets’ level, with Michael Bourn and Josh Hamilton slated for the most outfield bucks, then the Mets should pounce.
MARCO SCUTARO
Like with Victorino, there’s no need for the Mets to get caught in a bidding war, in case some team goes gaga over Scutaro’s tremendous October. If the price is reasonable, though, the 37-year-old would be a great fit here, allowing Daniel Murphy to be more of a role player.