The Mets and Astros share residence in one of baseball’s least desired clubs: They, and only they, have posted losing records each of the prior five seasons. No one else’s run of inadequacy runs longer in the industry.
And Mets fans, already immersed in a hate-love relationship with their team and particularly their owners, have taken notice: It seems like the tortoise Astros are passing by the hare Mets in this dynamic.
The Mets suffered an especially painful loss Thursday night, 5-1 to the Brewers in 13 innings, to fall to 29-37 — a season-worst eight games under .500. Out in Houston, meanwhile, the Astros outlasted Arizona, 5-4 in 10 innings, to elevate to 31-37.
“It’s been painful, there’s no question about it,” Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow said Thursday afternoon in a telephone interview. “But I really feel it advanced the process.”
“It” is the Astros’ full-blown rebuild in which they’ve engaged since Luhnow came aboard in December 2011, just a few months after Jim Crane purchased the team from Drayton McLane. It represents a considerable difference from the Mets’ attempt to balance rebuilding and relevance.
Believe it or not, this might be a case in which you could criticize the Wilpons and Saul Katz for not cutting their payroll more than they did. For not selling high on the likes of Daniel Murphy, Lucas Duda, Jon Niese and Bobby Parnell, let alone David Wright, in addition to the trades of Carlos Beltran, R.A. Dickey and Marlon Byrd. Though it’s fair to wonder whether this game plan actually could be executed in New York.
From Opening Day 2009 through the present, the Astros own a 343-535 record, a .391 winning percentage. In the same time period, the Mets are 403-473, .460. The Astros selected first overall in last week’s amateur draft, a record third straight year they had earned such a dishonor. In this span, the Mets gave their fans such treats as Dickey’s 2012 National League Cy Young Award, Jose Reyes’ 2011 NL batting title and Matt Harvey’s 2013 surge that culminated in him starting the All-Star Game at Citi Field.
Yet those peaks seemed to only increase the trust deficit between the Mets’ fans and their owners; Reyes and Dickey are gone and Harvey injured. Though the Mets continue to struggle to put together a quality team, the Astros look like a rising stock. They went 15-14 in May to post their first winning month since Luhnow took over baseball operations.
“I don’t think there are many teams in recent history that have tried to do what Houston’s done,” Mets general manager Sandy Alderson said Thursday. “In baseball, it’s usually not a recipe for success, but in this case, that’s a strategy they’ve pursued. It appears they’ve gotten through the worst of it. I applaud them for carving a strategy and sticking with it.”
When the new Astros group took over, it commissioned surveys of fans and corporate sponsors. The overall message they received, Luhnow said, was, “Just be honest with us. Don’t tell us one thing and do another.”
So the Astros didn’t kid anyone. While they naturally tried to win once they arrived at the ballpark, the roster at the ballpark was consistently awful. And if anyone rose to a level of adequacy, he quickly was traded away to restock the talent base with young players.
“We looked at our players and we said, ‘What’s our team going to look like in 2015, 2016, 2017?” Luhnow said. “Guys like [pitcher J.A.] Happ and [third baseman] Chris Johnson had value for contenders.”
Johnson went to Arizona and then to Atlanta. Happ went to Toronto and Bud Norris to Baltimore. Combine the trade returns on those deals with the high draft picks, and the Astros have one of the deepest talent bases in baseball.
What if the Mets had resolved to move anything with even a modicum of value à la the Astros? How much greater would the Mets’ talent pool be now had Alderson sold off players such as Murphy, Duda, Niese and Dillon Gee?
“Do I think it would be possible in most places?” Alderson said. “Probably not.”
The Yankees responded to last year’s 85-77 record by blowing off their plans to get their payroll under the $189 million luxury-tax threshold and instead doubling down on their long-term contract love. The Mets’ equivalent of that was re-upping with captain and face of the franchise David Wright and holding onto Murphy, Niese (who signed an extension in 2012), Duda and the now-injured Parnell.
Maybe the Mets can achieve their goals by bypassing the 95- and 100-loss seasons. Maybe they can use their impressive pitching depth to acquire a bat, and perhaps ownership actually will sign onto getting the payroll back into nine figures.
Nevertheless, because of the damage the Mets’ brand has sustained these last five years, it’s worth at least asking: How much worse could things possibly be if they had just done the full-blown rebuild?