MLB

Wright, Martin, Rivera and a brief exhange with Michael Weiner

Multiple best-laid plans went to waste as I tried to find a subject for this week’s Friday conversation, but perhaps it was meant to be. There’s much baseball news to discuss, and we’ll throw in a little something extra at the end.

David Wright is now a Met for the long term. It’s win-win-win.

Wright might have gotten more on the open market a year from now, but he gets a very fair deal – eight years for $138 million – and he has put himself to be the first Hall of Fame-caliber player to spend his entire career in a Mets uniform.

The Mets get themselves their desired “credibility,” and they didn’t really overpay to get it. Wright gets a little more than Evan Longoria, despite being considerably older than Longoria, because he’s considerably closer to free agency.

And the fans now know that these owners can afford to retain the team’s best and most popular player.

This past week, I heard a lot of questions like, “Why would Wright want to stay when the Mets when he’ll never win a World Series there?” That’s just silly. Any team can win a World Series by 2020, and for all of the talk about how much work the Mets need, to me, their areas where they need help are very clear: Outfield and catcher, and then bullpen. Their infield appears to be in good shape, and their starting rotation is playoff-caiber. Whether the Mets decide that they’re better off trading R.A. Dickey to fill some of those holes remains to be seen, but if the return just isn’t there, you can make a strong case for taking Dickey into the season on his $5 million deal and seeng if maybe, this season, the Mets can at least stay relevant into September.

–Here’s my column on Russell Martin’s decision to sign with the Pirates. No one would assert that Martn is perfect, or that he’s in, say, the top 10 percent of catchers in the major leagues. But two years for $16.5 million seems very reasonable to me.

The Yankees’ internal options are not very appealing. Going with Austin Romine would be a huge roll of the dice. Francisco Cervelli? The guy the Yankees just banished to the minor leagues for an entire season? Yeesh.

–Just as we thought earlier in the month, the Yankees’ efforts to get Mariano Rivera to accept a significant pay cut went pretty peacefully. Rivera very much wanted to come back after his brief 2012 campaign, and he apparently wasn’t fired up enough about dollars this time to start soliciting offers from the Red Sox and make the Yankees sweat. The Yankees’ strong relationship with Rivera continues.

–OK, so now conversation, but on Wednesday, I attended a media briefing with Players Association executive director Michael Weiner, who discussed myriad issues with a small group of reporters. Here’s an exchange among Ben Walker of the Associated Press, Weiner and me. We pick up after Weiner argued that the first person who held his job, Marvin Miller, who died earlier this week, should be in the Hall of Fame:

BW: Michael, speaking of the Hall of Fame, the ballot was officially announced today. Obviously, the voters are going through a lot of thoughts as far as the drug scandals. Any particular thoughts? Obviously, there are some big names involved who have been linked, suspected, a lot of things. Do you think that should cloud voters’ opinions, and how do you think some of the bigger names will do?

MW: I’m not going to predict how they would do. I do have thoughts as to how that should be thought about. And obviously every voter gets his or her own way of interpreting the criteria. One, in some instances, in every instance, you have to look at what the legal proceedings, what the proof and what the evidence is there on those issues. When you have a situation…it strikes me as unfair for a voter to say, “I understand Roger Clemens was exonerated by a court. But me, as my personal jury, I think he’s guilty and therefore I’m going to take this action against him.” That doesn’t seem right to me. Obviously you can do it, but under circumstances where there’s been a legal proceeding and somebody was exonerated, I think that’s relevant.

Two, there is a morals clause in the Hall of Fame, and I understand that’s going to be looked at. I don’t think it’s necessarily definitive. I think that, you look at the balance of a player’s career, and you decide, based on what the evidence is…There may be evidence that a certain player used performance-enhancing drugs for a short period of time during his career, and that’s relevant, but it’s not determinative. And I don’t think it should be. I think that’s one of the factors that you look at.

The example that I’ve used – some of you have heard me use it before, but I’ll use it in a different context – is the example of George Steinbrenner. When George Steinbrenner becomes eligible to get into the Hall of Fame, he should get into the Hall of Fame the first time. No questions asked. Given the bulk, the corpus, the scope of George Steinbrenner’s career and his impact on major-league baseball.

(Note: Actually, Steinbrenner was on the 2010 Veterans Committee ballot and didn’t get inducted. He’ll likely be on next year’s Veterans Committee ballot again.)

Having said that, put aside the campaign contribution conviction or the whole Howie Spira thing. I’m not even talking about those. George Steinbrenner was found to be one of 26 major-league owners, three times, being guilty of collusion. Being guilty of trying intentionally not to win in Major League Baseball, but participating in a conspiracy where they wouldn’t bid for, you name it. Kirk Gibson, Tim Raines, Jack Morris – the best players. He was found guilty of that by a legal proceeding.

You could say, “Well, George Steinbrenner cheated the game of baseball for a substantial section of his career, and therefore, the morals clause should keep him out.” I don’t think it should. George Steinbrenner belongs in because, when you look at everything he did, he deserves to be in. And I’d like to see – again, you asked the question – I’d like to see voters take that kind of approach in looking at some of the admittedly historic players who are up for a vote this time.

KD: Who was the Brewers’ owner during that period?

MW: I’m going to pass on that one.

–Have a great weekend.