Lowe Unimpressed By Mets' Offer

Bad week for Scotty.

I'd love to see an actual staring contest between Omar and Boras. That could be entertaining.

All this means is he and Boras will wait it out and try to get the Mets to up their offer (which they will).

What's that...in the tall grass over there?

Oh, it's Frank Wren lurking with a knife between his teeth and a 4/$52MM offer for Lowe in his pocket.

This isn't a joke...he literally just belly crawled across my yard in a guile suit.

But why should the Mets offer a huge contract right off the bat? To make Boras happy? If they are the only team with a current offer to Lowe, then they have the right to offer a small contract. No reason to bid against themselves in this situation; it's the exact same with Manny and the Dodgers. He isn't going to get the huge contract he wants...and neither should he if only one team is interested.

optionn, Dempster didn't necessarily sign cheap since he's really on had one good season as a starter recently. That said, he signed early and he signed at less than he could have gotten on the market because he wanted to stay with the Cubs. Imagine him on the market right now in Lowes position, we'd be talking about $14-16 million per year most likely, similar to Lowe.

As a Mets fan I'm not thrilled that the Mets are screwing around here.

If they are serious about signing Lowe & one more pitching they will offer Lowe 4yrs with a club option for a 5th, get him signed and move on.

While age is surely a concern with a 36-year-old pitcher, keep in mind that Lowe has not been an injury concern in the past, as Sheets and Burnett have been. For what they are, I would not say that the Braves should avoid making a play for Lowe, or even Sheets if the cost is low enough.

That said, I think Boras is probably right to be holding out, since the Mets clearly need rotation help. They're likely to pursue either Lowe or Perez, both of whom will earn Boras money. If he simply has them hold out, they are unlikely to settle for a #4 starter like Wolf, Garland, or Byrd, so he knows they will probably increase their contract offer to get Lowe or Perez.

Speaking of which, any word on who's interested in Perez? I hadn't heard much of anything.

-JM

Met's Low balled Derek Lowe.

I really think he should get 13-15 tops a year, But not 12 mil.

I could be wrong, but I think Wren has said that he prefers to fill the remaining rotation spot via free agency, because of the premium in prospects being demanded for pitchers that are actually worth trading for.

I think that the Braves will either sign one of Lowe, Perez or Kawakami, or just go into the season with what they have now + Smoltz & Glavine. The team isn't 1 pitcher away from being dominant, so there's no reason to go overboard in a trade to get that 1 guy.

Agreed with Bravesfan22193.

Don't knock Lowe, He's a quality pitcher and deserves 13 mil+ a year.

The Mets offer was obviously there first and if they sign him I believe it will be for 39 mil+.

Not anything Less.

If Frank Wren doesnt make a push for lowe ima go crazy. there is no reason why he shouldnt at least throw out an offer of 3 years plus a vesting year

we dont have to worry about him blocking our up and commers because in 3 years they will be well beyond ready. Hanson is ready now and the rest will be ready within 3 years.

@Cosmo Kramer: Where, exactly, do you want to play Youkilis? At third, over David Wright? Not happening. At first? Maybe longer-term; for 2009, though, the Mets are going with Delgado, expecting that he's the guy they saw in the second half.

Left field, maybe, and then into 1B when Delgado goes, is the only viable plan.

Lowe doesn't want to sign with the Braves and Atlanta can't risk the momumental embarrassment of being spurned again. He is not better than A.J. Burnett, as he is 5 years older and has fewer plus pitches. He really wants to sign with Boston, but I'm not sure they feel the same way. Lowe will be paid at least 14MM/year, with 3 guaranteed and a fourth year option. But, if I were the Mets I'd be trying to sign Ben Sheets instead. All pitchers are injury risks. They're all one errant throw away from TJ surgery. Even on his worst days, Sheets is far superior to Derek Lowe. He's the one the Mets, Braves and others should be targeting.

Cosmo Kramer,
"maybe the mets can sign him then flip him to the redsox for kevin youkilous?

the bosox wanted lowe but not for the money, mets get youkilous who can play lf for them

also plus youkilous isnt gonna sgn that contract extension

good deal for both sides"

First of all, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that there is some sort of rule about a guy signing a free agent deal and getting immediately traded. Even if there isn't, why would the Red Sox trade a Gold Glove, on base machine, mvp candidate first baseman that is still under team control for the next two years for a guy that they had and didn't want to pay 9 million a year let along 13-15 million. That would be absolutely crazy for the Red Sox to even consider.
Furthermore if the Red Sox really want Lowe then they will sign him. Why let some other team sign him instead and then give up arguably the most rounded member of your team. I'm not knocking Pedroia at all. He had a great year. But I personally thought that Youkilis got robbed a little.

In a nut shell, your theory is in no way gonna happen.

"I'd love to see an actual staring contest between Omar and Boras. That could be entertaining."

Agreed. Omar has shown us in the last couple of years that he will not be the guy to blink first. This could get very interesting.

"As a Mets fan I'm not thrilled that the Mets are screwing around here.

If they are serious about signing Lowe & one more pitching they will offer Lowe 4yrs with a club option for a 5th, get him signed and move on."

These are my favorite type of posters. The "sign the guy now for 2 more years and an extra 45 million because I am bored and I want Derek Lowe NOW DADDY. I WANT HIM NOW."

I love the guys that think it is worth an extra 2 years and 40 million on a contract so we can have a guy in January and they can go and have their little argument with the Philly fans about who will win the NL East this year. I mean, forget the fact that there is no other offer on the table, forget about the fact that the Mets (like with K-Rod) seem the most obvious fit, just give him the extra 2 years now so we can get this thing done, so what if we have to bid against ourselves? Brilliant plan.

I also love the people stupid enough to think that Scott Boras will let Derek Lowe sign somewhere else because the big meanie Mets didn't offer enough right off the bat. Do you Braves fans think that all the Braves have to do is offer 3/45 and Lowe will be in ATL? It isn't like Boras will just accept that deal on the spot. He will go back to NY, tell them that ATL just offered 3/45, and the Mets will have an opportunity to better that offer. This whole idea that the Mets ruined their chances of signing Derek because they "lowballed" him is absurd. Plain idiotic.

Why even respond to something like that though? It's like that movie Idiocracy. The people in it had ideas so wildly stupid there was no reasonable or logical way to argue their point. First of all, sign and trades are not allowed. Second of all, if the Sox wanted Lowe, why the hell wouldn't they just sign him instead of trading their best player for him?

melonis rex,

You could also consider Lowe a "young" 36 because he spent a few years, mid-career, in the pen.

I think he's good to make every start for at least three more years, maybe four or five, barring some freak injury we see no indications of now.

I have nothing against the production that lowe has shown, I do agree that his risk of injury is lower than others, simply because he does have to rely so little on actual force from his body to be effective.

My thing is that I would just not rather have to rely on three pitchers in their mid to late 30s once the rest of our young talent is ready to contribute.

If we could have Vazquez and Hudson to anchor our rotation for a few years, and then also have Jurrjens, Hanson, and a young pitcher that we trade for to anchor our staff heading into the next decade, I think that would be a more effective way to construct a team.

Furthermore, it is hilarious to think that it would cost us hanson to land greinke or Malholm. While the Royals and Pirates are not in a position to where they need to move their players like the Pads needed to move peavy, we also are not in a immediate need position to acquire either pitcher. Also, we have the quality depth in our system that we could meet multiple areas of needs for the pirates or royals in a trade without having to give up Hanson or Heyward.

--i think if i scrolled to the bottom and no one had responded to the riduculous youk lowe "trade" i'm not sure what i would ever visited this site comments again...--

Most of these posters are regulars and have learned to either ignore or mock Cosmo Kramer's ideas...

maybe the Mets looked at Lowe's splits away from Dodger Stadium and came up with more than a fair offer based on the stats.
08 home- 2.30 ERA/ 0.93 WHIP
08 away- 4.42 ERA/ 1.39 WHIP
07 home- 3.51 ERA/ 1.22 WHIP
07 away- 4.19 ERA/ 1.31 WHIP
06 home- 3.18 ERA/ 1.19 WHIP
06 away- 4.13 ERA/ 1.35 WHIP
05 home- 3.74 ERA/ 1.21 WHIP
05 away- 3.48 ERA/ 1.29 WHIP

maybe the Mets are starting negotiations. you dont just start with the highest amount your going to give. the team makes an offer. regardless of what that offer is it is likely that the agent will want more. in this situation the Mets made an offer that they probually didnt realistically think Lowe would accept. you also have to factor in other teams. if no other team has made an offer then who are the Mets currently bidding against? nobody. which is also why they would be stupid to increase their offer unless another team got involved and bidded higher.

Well....here is another perfect example of why there should be a stupidity factor on this site... MR. T, Wren never said anything after the AJ Burnett signing, nor did he say anything about not dealing with Boras....It was after the Furcal fiasco and it was the Arn Tellem and Paul kisner agency that he no longer is going to deal with.... And to further show your stupidity, Randy Wolf is represented by Tellem, so he is not likely to be considered.....please become educated before posting again

Okay ill admit that was stupid of me 2 say i dont follow you guys down there b/c there is no reason for me 2 you guys are not a threat n e more and some 1 told me it was borass but i guess it wouldnt be the first I was told wrong information. And to be fair I did say you should have a shot at 1 of the two out of Wolf and Garland so I wasnt wrong there so you see my friend even when a mistake is made I am still right...

Mr T,

Are you 12?

Since Lowe became a starter in 2002, he has thrown over 180 innings every year. Sheets did it 2002-2004 but only once since (2008). For virtually the same money per year, Lowe is a safer bet. But Sheets undoubtedly has more upside if healthy.

And Redaxe Citifield is a pitchers park just like shay was they built it that way.

n i call her Shay since that is where i took my fiance on our first date and her name is shay. Never liked SHEA its kinda ugly,,, shoulda been spelled shay...

@Mr. T: I suspect Citi Field is a pitcher's park (all the metrics suggest as much) but we won't know until it's been used. (As they say, that's why they actually play the games :-)

Rolling Hawk, Parnell looks destined for the bullpen, not a starter. And even if we use Niese, we still need another starter. And no one wants Wolf, Garland or Uehara to be the 4th starter. They would be downgrades from Perez.

The plan that I read for the Mets was to get 1 of Lowe Perez or if they cant get 1 of those 2 go for wolf. They also wanted to sign another starter to compete with Niese for the fifth spot, it was rumored to be Redding, Marquis(not possible, and another pitcher who i forget at the moment) or a pitcher along those lines that wont have to much risk since we wouldnt offer them that much for a contract.

stop trying what to spell your right i get every word wrong dont know why i try maybe i should just stop breathing to the fact of the matter is unlike you I was out very late last night had off today and woke up a little while ago with a splitting head ache so excuse me if i typed my girls name instead of the stadium or if i got an agent wrong lol, sorry im not always on here and reading everyones posts to see if they made a spelling error maybe thats what ill do with the next ten years of my life sounds like fun.

@Mr. T: Of course park designers intend for them to play a particular way or other. But the fact is that we won't _know_ how Citi Field (or the new Yankee Stadium, or any other not-yet-used facility) plays until we have a good sample (at least one year, preferably three) of games played there.

Sure, the saying really applies to the old adage about "on any given day..." -- but it works fine for pretty much any case of predictions vs actual data in sports.

Look they have experts who are paid big money just for that to design the park as a "hitter or Pitchers" park and I would say maybe 99 percent of the time they will be right so if they say that they are building a stadium as a Pitchers park Id guess that it would come out as a pitchers park it is not just CHANCE they dont just build the stadium they will use the next decade and more with out knowing what type of park it is going to be because believe it or not GMs build teams around thier home park so i doubt they would leave so much money at stake with a well maybe it will be a hitters park. The dimensions make it so it is easier or harder to hit in the baseball park. Wether or not a team plays that way on any given day is another question. Bigger walls and and a larger field it will be easier for the pitchers its shouldnt be 2 hard to comprehend of course they dont know for sure but they have an estimations of how the ball will carry in the ball park and so on like I said they would lose Millions if they couldnt tell.

i completely disagree with you on that bj. just because the mets threw down a low offer, i highly doubt lowe would be too insulted by it to accept a higher one by the mets. thats kind of ridiculous. they probably started low considering there is no other obvious interest from any other team so maybe they can get a discount seeing as it looks like no one plans on bidding on him anytime soon.

In fact, I say make the offer now to Sheets before someone wakes up and sees the benefit of getting a potentially dominant pitcher at a big discount. 20 strong starts from Sheets is better than 10 strong and 20 poor from Perez - and lets face it - Perez will not give us more than 10 good starts. Santana, Sheets, Lowe, Pelfrey and Maine with Niese called up from AA/AAA when needed is a super rotation. Its all about pitching this off season. Forget Manny, Dye, etc.. They are not going to happen. The market lacks an attractive, reasonably young right handed bat. Hudson might be nice at 2B, but no one will take Castillo with that horrible contract unless Omar can swing Guillen for Castillo from KC. He's a headache, but still productive.

Between the complete joke that is Mr. T and the Ms. Cleo like fortune telling of KMAC, the Met fans here will have to work hard to have any credibility.

Okay ill admit that was stupid of me 2 say i dont follow you guys down there b/c there is no reason for me 2 you guys are not a threat n e more

Posted by: Mr. T The MeTro MaN | January 01, 2009 at 05:57 PM

Let's think about this for a second. The braves who most likely have the best farm system in the NL East (dont know about the marlins) and about 35 million to spend are not a threat. this is a team that was supposed to surprise both philly and the mets last year but struggled due to injuries. Not many teams suffer as many key injuries as that in a year. The only players of note gone from that team are hudson and smoltz. they can still re-sign smoltz and if they add lowe he can replace hudson's production. Vasquez is an improvement over mike hampton. Mike Gonzalez will be in the pen for a whole year, that should make a difference. they are still looking at an upgrade for left field and i expect them to get it. They are 2 or 3 signings from making an impact once again. but you're right we're not much of a threat to you, you do plenty of harm to yourselves with these late season choke jobs

It's all business. Plain and simple. If you put in a high bid you have no leverage to try and save some money. While this is not a good offer I am QUITE sure that this is what Boras expected. The offer will go higher and the Mets will eventually sign Lowe. No one else is really interested. If Atlanta gets involved the Mets can and most likely would offer more money.

It not only a sport folks, it's a business too.

wonder if Lowe is taking the trek down "Kyle Loshe Lane". One year deal with another team to get his value up for better economic times??? hmm. He'd look good in Philly at 1 year $16 million. Then they'd have their choice next year of resigning him or Myers and having Carrasco take the other spot.

And PhilsWSChump if I were you I would hope the Mets get Lowe and not the Braves because if the Braves get Lowe I can almost guarentee you that the Mets would resign Perez almost a guarentee unless he wants over 16 mil a year.

philswschamps:

On a serious note (since I'm a Yankees fan and don't really care about the NL rivalries), I doubt that Lowe will go the Lohse route. That is primarily based on age. Lowe is too old to try to reinvigorate his career like Lohse did. He's at the point now where everyone is conscious of his age as a potential problem, despite his history of durability. Lohse didn't have that problem. He could afford to take a year and still be an appealing pitcher if he improved his pitching. Lowe could do the same thing and not see much improvement because his primary problem is (still) his age and his contract demands. I don't think anyone doubts his ability, it's whether or not the potential risks make him worth the money.

Bravesfan:

I would be really surprised if the Marlins had a worse farm system than the Braves. Not a knock on the Braves at all, it's just that they were contenders/NL East champs for so long that its hard to build a good farm system that way. It's actually kind of amazing that teams like the Red Sox got the talent that they did through the draft since guys like Pedroia and Ellsbury were late-1st-rounders. I'll never forgive Brian Cashman's scouting director for passing on those guys. The Marlins, on the other hand, have sucked royally for a while now. They have also reaped the rewards of their talent by trading it for prospects, like the Miguel Cabrera or Josh Beckett trades.

Anyway, on the actual topic at hand, I still say the Mets need Lowe more than anyone. The Braves have more depth in their system and better pitching coming up than the Mets do and can afford to take a flyer on the free agents. The Mets, on the other hand, have spent money this off-season reworking their team and really, REALLY need some on-field success to go along with their efforts. If they lose games because of their weak starting pitching without Lowe, there will be serious questions for Omar Minaya to deal with. He can't afford to have 2009 blow up in his face.

Finally, I understand home-team sentiment, Mr. T, but you can be civil at the same time. Also, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Perez wanted $16 million per. After all, Boras' scouting report claims he's one of the 5 best lefties in baseball :-P.

-JM

i honestly dont know why the Braves wouldnt be considered a threat. The only reason they didnt make it in 06 is because of their pitching.

in 07 they called themselves re-vamping their pitching and their bullpen. to bad almost all of their injuries were in their pitching dept. they lost their 2,3, and 4 starters. although hampton came back at he end of the year it was too late by then. they lost their closer and 3 top relievers(gonzalez, moylan, acosta)

so for you to say we wont be a threat if we replace/upgrade our starters and have our bullpen back? come on thats foolish. and we were usually winning games before the bullpen collapsed in the 8th and 9th innings and that wont happen this year with a healthy gonzalez/acosta and moylan coming back.

then on top of that we are adding another bat to have more runs scored.

come on lets not be foolish and arrogant

I know the Phillies don't really need him for this year (we already have Kendrick, Happ, Park and Carasco all battling for the #5 slot)

Although wouldn't be great if they went out on sending spree and got Lowe?

It would guarentee the NL's best starting rotation (Giants very close 2nd if not even)

And it would serve as protection if Myers isn't re-signed.

@nrmax88 Yes, I know. You described Daredevil, but he has no decent theme...