Every professional sports team tries to navigate the tightrope between the present and the future, between the one-year plan and the five-year plan.
For the Mets, Bobby Parnell’s setback has turned that tightrope as thin as a piece of dental floss.
Desperate to contend this year, the Mets have lost their closer for at least six weeks and for as long as a year-plus with an incomplete tear of the medial collateral ligament in his right elbow. An already shaky bullpen now appears a potential season-sinker.
The Mets may very well possess the necessary life preservers in their minor league system, by virtue of the many arms they’ve collected. For now, though? They’re more interested in protecting those arms. It will be up to the stopgaps to ensure that plan’s stability.
“We’ll have some of that young pitching stay in [Triple-A] Las Vegas for the first month or so and then determine what our needs are at the major league level, and draw on that talent accordingly,” general manager Sandy Alderson said in a news conference Wednesday, before the Mets took on Washington at Citi Field. “The idea will be to start those prospects who are in the rotation, let’s say, through the latter part of April and then occasionally pitch them out of the ’pen.”
Translation: In time, names you’ve heard like Jake deGrom and Rafael Montero could be part of the bullpen solution. Alderson would much rather see new closer Jose Valverde, his fellow retread Kyle Farnsworth and other guys provide the kids with some coverage. After taking three years to deliberately build up their pitching corps, the Mets don’t want to stunt anyone’s development for the purpose of putting out a fire at the big league level.
With the 90-win “challenge” draping this team, however — with everything in and around the Mets screaming how badly they need to climb out of their 75ish-win rut — they can’t afford to just shrug off the one-year plan as they have the prior few years. Sometimes, you have to risk stunting someone’s development.
To avoid that, the onus falls first on Valverde, who pitched very well on Opening Day on Monday and put himself in position to get the win before Parnell blew the save. The 36-year-old often can be hilarious and boisterous. On Wednesday, though, he sounded properly somber and deferential about succeeding Parnell.
“I feel bad for Bobby,” Valverde said.
With Valverde graduating from the eighth inning to the ninth, the eighth will be filled by “probably one of the lefties and one of the righties,” manager Terry Collins said. “I don’t know who it is yet.”
Oh. Farnsworth, just summoned to take Parnell’s roster spot, figures to get some action, as should Jeurys Familia. The Mets would love for Vic Black to right himself at Las Vegas and get back in the mix.
As for external candidates such as free agents Joel Hanrahan and Kevin Gregg, “We’ll continue to monitor those situations,” Alderson said. “But the way it stands now, we want to see how things shake out with the bullpen over the next several weeks.”
In due time, it could be the high-end minor leaguers like deGrom, Montero and Logan Verrett. Noah Syndergaard will be preserved as a starter, Alderson confirmed. Think of the Yankees turning to Joba Chamberlain, at the time a promising starting pitcher in the minors, to rescue their bullpen in 2007.
That same year, the Yankees called up Phil Hughes to make his major league debut in April, after vowing previously he would spend far more time in the minors. Guys got injured. Worlds collided. While the young arms helped the ’07 Yankees make the playoffs, maybe Hughes and Chamberlain would have turned out differently if external circumstances hadn’t dictated their schedules?
The Mets won’t give up on a Parnell return this season. Pointedly, Alderson said the team endorsed Parnell’s current conservative path of a platelet-rich plasma injection followed by two weeks of rest then an arm-strengthening program. Those words stood out as a marked contrast to the Mets’ clear desire last year that Matt Harvey immediately undergo Tommy John surgery to treat his torn ulnar collateral ligament.
Plenty of bullpen balls in the air for these Mets. And really, they don’t want to drop any of them. So they carefully walk the tightrope, and we all wonder whether they can pull this off.