The Metropolitan: Bye-bye Brodie
How Sandy Alderson undid his predecessor’s tenure. Plus, all the day's news
Good Morning,
Today we’ll talk about how Sandy Alderson effectively erased the tenure (and roster) of Brodie Van Wagenen this off-season. But we start with the news.
⏰ Catch me up in 60(ish) seconds…
DAYS UNTIL OPENING DAY: 8
🚀 TAKING OFF: The Mets won 5-3 on Tuesday, powered by another home run from Francisco Lindor, who has hit a long ball in three consecutive games and in four of the last five. Overall, he is slashing an impressive .342/.390/.684 this spring.
⚾️ SO-SO: Meanwhile, the game’s starter, Marcus Stroman, struggled a bit in his second-to-last tune-up before the season begins. He gave up 9 hits — many of the hard hit variety — but mostly minimized the damage, allowing 3 runs over 5 innings.
EXTENSION? Stroman told reporters he is open to a contract extension but, “we haven’t gone down that road at all. I’m open, but I’m focused on doing everything I can to help this team win.”
👍 BULLPEN: The best news of the day might have been the performance of the bullpen. New faces Jacob Barnes, Aaron Loup, Trevor May, and Tommy Hunter bridged together four innings of perfect relief, combining to strike out 6 hitters, while walking only one and not allowing a single hit.
HEATING UP: After a forgettable first appearance earlier in the month, Barnes has pitched extremely well, with 8 K’s over his past three appearances. He escaped an inherited jam (two runners on and nobody out) unscathed on Tuesday.
D-🤺: With everyone still worried about the Mets’ defense, J.D. Davis made a nice play at third on Tuesday. He also hit his first home run of the spring.
🥊 COMPETITION: The Mets might not decide who the 5th starter will be until the very end of camp: “We’re still a long ways from assembling — and I’m saying a long ways, we’re only a week from ending this camp — but from making the decision,” manager Luis Rojas told reporters after watching Jordan Yamamoto throw a simulated game on Tuesday. “It’ll be right at the end of camp when we have that fifth spot.”
😄 FEELING GOOD: Slugger Pete Alonso leads the Mets in OPS this spring and told reporters he is “feeling really good” and said, “I feel like I have done a real good job of being a complete player this spring, and I want to keep evolving and keep getting better. I feel that being consistent has really helped me.”
🏥 RECOVERING: After undergoing surgery five weeks ago to remove a bone spur in his elbow, right-hander Seth Lugo has “responded really well to the treatment,” according to Luis Rojas. “I’ve been getting good reports, he’s very animated, and he has a great attitude.”
🎧 LISTEN: Our own Jeffrey Bellone joined Anthony Rivera on the Subway to Shea podcast to discuss the impact of the Carlos Carrasco injury, how Brandon Nimmo can improve in centerfield, and much more. Check it out!
An invisible two-year reign
🧓 by Blake Zeff
Much has been made of this busy Mets’ offseason — from new ownership, to multiple new GMs, and a largely remade team. But now that the dust has settled and the offseason is effectively over, a glaring storyline has come into focus: just how dramatically the new Steve Cohen/Sandy Alderson regime has repudiated Brodie Van Wagenen’s entire tenure. From player personnel to front office staff and even some draft picks, the Brodie era has been dismantled so systematically and comprehensively in just four months, that his two-year reign will have strikingly little impact on the club this year or in the near future (unless you count what he sent away).
That’s a pretty remarkable statement to make about a management team that presided over the most recent official game the Mets have played. And yet, look at the 2021 front office, Major League roster, and farm system. With the exception of a few employees (including most significantly, the manager), 2 or 3 big leaguers (more on them in a bit) and a few recent draft picks (like Matthew Allan, JT Ginn and Pete Crow-Armstrong, whom many are high on, but are years away), Van Wagenen’s fingerprint is all but missing from the current version of this franchise… before a single game has been played since his departure.
Within hours of taking over the franchise, Cohen and Alderson relieved the top levels of the front office (Brodie, VP Allard Baird, special assistant Omar Minaya and farm director Jared Banner) of their duties. As a result, no senior official brought in by Brodie remains in the upper echelons of the inner circle. (A rare staffer promoted by Van Wagenen who was retained by the new regime? Director of Pro Scouting Bryn Alderson — yep, Sandy’s son.)
But the Brodie erasure goes much deeper than the c-suite. Look at the Major League roster. 18 members of the current 40-man are gone from last year. From a new starting catcher and shortstop, to a completely remade starting rotation and bench, these are two different teams. And most of the 22 players that do remain from 2020 were holdovers from the original Sandy Alderson tenure. In fact, the only remaining big-league Mets acquired by Van Wagenen are J.D. Davis, Dellin Betances, Miguel Castro, Jeurys Familia, Edwin Diaz and Marcus Stroman (extending Jacob deGrom was wise but doesn’t count as a BVW acquisition in our book).
And each of those remaining Brodie guys comes with a story.
Let’s start with the only everyday player, Davis. While he was heralded as the one big find Van Wagenen acquired, the new regime has made no secret of its ambivalence towards the defensively challenged third baseman, declining to commit to him as the starter, and making him the one case they opted to battle in arbitration (over a difference of $300,000). It looks like JD will get the chance to be the everyday third baseman, but it follows reports of trade talks with the Cubs about Kris Bryant, the acquisition of Jonathan Villar, and plenty of reps at third this spring for Jeff McNeil and Luis Guillorme. In other words, if the Sandy front office could have replaced Davis at third, it sure looks like they would have.
Betances and Familia are both relievers past their prime, whom the club had no choice but to keep around this year, given that they’re under contract. Betances is on a relatively cheap player option after last year’s struggles, so it remains to be seen how long he’ll stay. Tougher to part ways with will be Familia, whom Van Wagenen gave a $30 million deal after his closing days were behind him. But put it this way: neither will be counted on to be the kind of stopper they once were, and if the front office could have moved them, it would have.
Which brings us to Diaz. There’s a time and a place to spill ink (and tea) on the notorious deal that also brought Robinson Cano to Queens. Let’s save it for another day. For the purposes of this particular column, let’s just say that Diaz is expected to close and is therefore the main exception to our thesis. He could have a serious impact on the season — for better or worse. What it cost to acquire him was mind-boggling the day it occurred, and always will be. But it’s a fact: Diaz is the one key part of the Van Wagenen portfolio still standing in Flushing.
As for Stroman, he was re-signed on a qualifying offer that the new regime didn’t itself offer, though it’s fair to assume it would have. And Castro has a chance to be a useful arm in the pen. As I said, we won’t get into Cano here, other than to say, if they could have gotten anyone on earth to take his contract, they would have. (Side note: Could Cano have been part of a package shipped to Colorado with Davis to get Nolan Arenado? I know it sounds crazy, but the Rockies paid St. Louis $50 million to take the star third baseman’s contract, which suggests they might have taken Cano as the salary relief portion of a deal with the Mets. Oh well...)
In the end, Stroman, Diaz and Davis are the only impact players acquired by Brodie who remain on Alderson’s reboot -- and it’s not clear that any of them are in the new regime’s long-term plans. Plus, while they’re all here now, they came at a steep cost, particularly to Alderson: each was traded for multiple prospects he had once signed.
In remaking the team this year, Alderson’s signature move, of course, was the deal for stars Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco. To get them, Sandy drew a line in the sand and refused to surrender prospects like catcher Francisco Alvarez (whom he had signed in 2018) or infielder Ronny Mauricio (whom he’d signed in 2017).
Which blue-chip prospects did he happily give up instead? Josh Wolf and Isaiah Greene. High-level draft picks of one Brodie Van Wagenen.
⚾️ Diamondbacks ace Zac Gallen was diagnosed with a hairline stress fracture in his right forearm and will miss several weeks of action, per Zach Buchanan.
⚾️ San Diego’s superstar shortstop Fernando Tatis, Jr., left his game yesterday with shoulder discomfort, causing the team a massive scare, but is thought to be fine now, per Kevin Acee.
⚾️ An MRI found that Toronto centerfielder George Springer suffered a Grade 2 oblique strain, which is better than the team had feared, and there’s hope he could still be ready for the first series of the season, per Mike Wilner.
⚾️ However, the Blue Jays most likely lost their new closer, Kirby Yates, for the season. GM Ross Atkins said the reliever is probably headed for Tommy John surgery.
⚾️ MLB is issuing a memo to teams this week that it plans to use Statcast to try to catch pitchers who are illegally doctoring the ball (a topic Trevor Bauer has been the subject of), per Joel Sherman.
🔗 David Peterson embraces ‘move forward’ mentality, by Anthony DiComo, MLB.com: “At 9, still a child, Peterson was consumed by loss…. forced to grow up faster than anyone ever should. “It was devastating,” Peterson said, “being a 9-year-old kid and having my mom look at me and telling me that my dad, the main male figure in my life, is gone and isn’t coming back.”
🔗 Mets pitcher Taijuan Walker explores creative and business interests in white-hot NFT space, by Andy Martino, SNY: “This spring, Mets pitcher Taijuan Walker quietly made a small piece of history as the first MLB player to make and sell an NFT. If that sentence doesn’t make sense to you, you’re not alone. The arena that Walker has entered is increasingly popular in the art and sports worlds, but still unknown to many in the general public. For him, NFTs represent an opportunity to express his visual creativity, raise money for worthy causes and pursue extra income.”
🔗 Cautionary tales loom over Mets’ Francisco Lindor contract talks, by Joel Sherman, NY Post: “Francisco Lindor and the Mets are now circling each other, and often when there is this kind of momentum a deal becomes inevitable. But the Gonzalez/Jeter episodes remind that industry expectations of a deal and a deal being done are quite different. And industry expectations are strong. I have yet to speak to a non-involved executive or player representative who does not anticipate a Lindor extension before the season.”
🔗 Athletic genes push Nido after COVID bout, by Anthony DiComo, MLB.com: “Nido’s mother was an Olympic swimmer who represented Puerto Rico in the 1968 Summer Olympics. His uncle was a professional tennis player who played at Clemson University, while his father competed in amateur tennis and golf tournaments. Nido’s grandfather and great-uncle played basketball at a high level.”
🎧 LISTEN: Deesha Thosar of the NY Daily News helps Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley preview the Mets on FanGraphs’ Effectively Wild podcast.
And…we leave you with the Polar Bear sharing why he’s so pumped to play in front of New York fans again…
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Only problem is that Canos Contract is still there
Kind of mind boggling how much "erasing" ! Reminds me of the 1996 movie Eraser - Arnold movie and the line was "You've Been erased".....