Catch me up in 30 seconds…
We start with Jon Paul Morosi dropping Woj bombs about the Mets’ front office search:
The Brewers denied the Mets from interviewing David Stearns for their president of baseball operations role;
Meanwhile, the Mets have requested permission to talk to Indians GM Mike Chernoff;
And Rays executive Bobby Heck is under consideration for a top front-office role with the Mets.
We also learned Oakland A’s GM David Forst is a target for the Mets from the Oakland A’s beat writer for the San Francisco Chronicle.
And there were a few other news items:
Mets have touched based with free agent right-handers Charlie Morton and Corey Kluber, along with lefty Mike Minor, per Tim Ryder of MetsMerized.
Mets are interested in free agent Marcell Ozuna, per the New York Post (more on this in a bit).
Searching for Bobby Axelrod
With more hair and cable bravado, the character Bobby Axelrod of the hit Showtime series Billions is loosely based off Mets owner Steve Cohen. If you’ve never seen the show, make sure you do, but to give you an idea for the purpose of this article, the plot follows a hedge fund manager in constant conflict and mutual acquaintance with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Axelrod relies on data and information (sometimes illegally acquired) to make billion dollar bets on the market. When the law catches up to him, as it once did with Cohen, Axe is forced to put his trust in a brilliant soon-to-be competitor named Taylor who trusts mathematics in finding optimal solutions.
What viewers learn, perhaps moreso when the two become enemies, is that only a few people on the planet can match the decision-making prowess of Axelrod, and that, more than any inside tip or fancy algorithm, is why he is so successful.
Steve Cohen is used to being his own Bobby Axelrod at Point72, but he will need to find someone else to play that role with the Mets. At this point, Sandy Alderson more closely resembles a clean-cut version of “Wags” (apologies for those who haven’t seen the show) than he does Taylor.
Fans love to talk about which All-Star hitter will end up in the Mets’ lineup, or which Cy Young arm will fill out the rotation, but the most important decision for the Mets this offseason comes down to which nerd in a suit becomes president of baseball operations.
As more teams realize the importance of shrewd executive leadership, the competition for top talent has become fierce.
“A lot of ownership groups right now – and this has changed over the past decade, maybe over the past five or eight years – are looking at executives as competitive advantages or disadvantages,” one current executive told The Athletic. “They’re treating us a little bit differently now. In some ways that’s good because it has meant escalating salaries for all of us. In some ways it’s a challenge because it limits movement.”
The Mets have already been denied permission to talk to Brewers president of baseball operations David Stearns. Milwaukee promoted him in January of 2019 for this exact reason. It provides them with cover against a lateral move to a new organization. For Stearns, in particular, the allure of the Big Apple would be tempting. He was born and raised in Manhattan and has already spent time in the Mets organization.
Now, I’ve delayed long enough in talking about the biggest baseball news of the week, and perhaps for the Mets. Curse-ender Theo Epstein announced that he will step down as president of baseball operations with the Chicago Cubs, sparking a flurry of excitement among Mets fans that this is the first step toward him moving to Queens. However, Epstein appears committed to taking a year off and he could be aiming for something bigger, such as a partnership in an ownership group.
Whether Steve Cohen and Sandy Alderson can convince Epstein to eventually find his way to New York is anyone’s guess. But if you’re praying for this to happen (as I know many of you are), former Marlins executive David Samson offers some hope:
"You're looking at the new president of baseball operations for the New York Mets with a piece of the team," Samson said via CBS Sports. "He will sign a long-term deal for $10 million a year with a piece of the team because Steve Cohen recognizes that you don't become pennywise and pound foolish. He's from Wall Street. You pay your best Wall Street guys $10-30 million and you give them bonuses. Theo will cost Steve money. Theo can walk in there and make a managerial change."
Until the Mets hire a full-time president, expect Epstein’s name to hover over Citi Field like those things called planes used to before this pandemic started. It’s not impossible to believe the Mets could simply hire a GM to work under Alderson until they can convince someone like Epstein to become president, perhaps a year down the road.
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Money over Prospects
I realize this headline sort of reads like a rap lyric, and maybe we should come up with a catchy tune and surrounding verse for what should be the offseason slogan for the Mets.
From Joel Sherman on Monday:
When asked over the weekend if he agreed with the strategy that the Mets should be using financial capital rather than expend personnel to make improvements, Alderson said, “Absolutely right. There are only two currencies in baseball — one is players, the other is money. If you are not spending money, you have to spend players. … We have to be careful how we use players in transactions.”
This is music to my ears. As people who have reached out to me on Twitter about possible Mets trades know, I keep typing the same response: focus on improving the team with money.
Cohen noted in his introductory press conference that he wants to be like the Dodgers in building a perennial contender. You can’t be the Dodgers when your farm system is ranked near the bottom of the league every year.
To the previous regime’s credit - and I note this because it’s easy to point to their failures - things are starting to trend in the right direction. After Baseball America ranked the farm system as the third worst in baseball following the Marcus Stroman trade that sent two talented arms to Toronto, the organization has crept up to 20th on BA’s most recent list, aided by a strong recent draft that netted three legit prospects in OF Pete Crow-Armstrong, RHP J.T. Ginn, and OF Isaiah Greene.
Twentieth is a long way off from the Top-5, or even the Top-10, where a team looking to create a system that constantly churns out talent should want to live. There is room for growth in the current crop of players in the Mets’ system, as many of them are extremely young. But real improvement must come from an organizational commitment to identifying young talent and investing in their development.
As Alderson notes in his comment to Sherman, the Mets can improve their roster by spending money in the short-term. This should allow them to walk and chew bubble game at the same time, something the previous ownership didn’t seem to know how to do, either figuratively or literally.
If the Mets are aggressive in signing free agents or acquiring players cheap because they are willing to pick up their contracts, it will give their scouting and development staff time to build up the farm.
Long story, short: unless they are making a trade at an extreme prospect discount (i.e. trading easily replaceable prospects as window dressing to a deal structured around the other team saving money), the Mets should avoid any big-time trades.
A time will come to swing a blockbuster trade. But right now, money over prospects is the path to improving the roster in the near-term, while remaining committed to building a perennial contender.
Mets interest in Marcell Ozuna
JT Realmuto. George Springer. DJ LeMahieu. Marcell Ozuna.
What do these players have in common?
They could become the four highest-paid free agent hitters this offseason.
Which player is unlike the rest?
Marcell Ozuna.
Picking up from our earlier theme, the Mets enter this offseason looking to improve their roster while also building up their farm system. Marcell Ozuna represents the best hitter on the open market who doesn’t have a qualifying offer attached to his name. In other words, instead of forfeiting a draft pick as compensation to sign him, as they would if they sign any of the other players listed above, the Mets can simply pay him to come to Queens.
So if you’re wondering why the Mets would be interested in a player who is best served in a designated hitter role that might not exist in the National League in 2021, follow the draft compensation trail.
Adding Ozuna checks off a few more boxes, too:
He would give the Mets a much-needed right-handed bat in the lineup.
He would also give them coverage if they want to trade Dominic Smith or Brandon Nimmo instead of dipping deeper into their system.
While everyone has focused on the amount Ozuna crushed the ball in 2020, and rightfully so, what stands out to me is his walk rate. It’s a phenomena how his walk rate has improved over the past two years: despite remaining a free-swinger at the plate, swinging nearly as often and making less contact, the 30-year-old walked almost 2.5 more times last season than he did in 2018.
How is this possible? A few reasons:
He is working deeper into counts, seeing over four pitchers per plate appearance (versus 3.7 in 2018), using patience early in the count - taking the first pitch - so he can be more aggressive later in the count;
Pitchers might be able to sneak a first-pitch strike past him due to this approach, but forget about doing that later in the count; Ozuna struck out looking only 16.7 percent of the time this past season, down from 28.2 percent in 2018.
Finally, he is fouling off more pitches with two strikes in the count, helping him stay alive until he finds the right pitch to mash.
And mash Ozuna did last season. If you like traditional stats, he batted .338 with 18 home runs and 56 RBIs in 60 games played. If you like the fancy stuff, he hit the ball harder than almost everyone in baseball with an exit velocity that ranks in the 96th percentile.
Most importantly, he was lethal against fastballs. As the chart borrowed from FanGraphs shows below, only Met-Killer Freddie Freeman has had better success against the heater recently. Ozuna might be aging, but his bat speed seems to be fine.
What does this all mean?
If you want to forget everything that happened in 2020 - and why wouldn’t you - making a case for Ozuna requires you to have faith in his improved bat speed and ability to get on base without smacking the cover off the ball. It’s hard to believe the veteran will ever match the production he put up over 60 games in front of empty seats, but he has always been a ferocious hitter and there are legitimate reasons to believe he can be a productive right-handed bat even with his slash line returning to normal.
The fact that he wouldn’t cost any draft compensation makes him more desirable.
The right-hander is an awkward fit on the roster if there is no DH next year, unless they make another trade. But the Mets can afford to wait to see how the rules play out before trying to sign him. For once, the market will wait on the team from Queens.
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