The Mets announced bad news for a key member of the current team (Chris Young), and an integral part of future Mets teams (Jenrry Mejia). Here are the details on the pitchers, plus a note on the club's financial issues:
- Young has an anterior capsule tear in his throwing shoulder – the same injury Johan Santana had – according to Adam Rubin of ESPNNewYork.com (Twitter links). Young faces surgery or lots of rehab.
- As Rubin pointed out earlier today, Young won't reach any of the incentives in his contract if he doesn’t pitch again this season. In that case, the Mets will only be responsible for his $1.1MM base salary.
- Mejia will have Tommy John surgery, according to Rubin (on Twitter). The Mets announced last week that Mejia, their top prospect, has a complete MCL tear of the right elbow.
- Commissioner Bud Selig told The Mike Lupica Show that the Dodgers need to be tracked carefully and that the Mets are working toward a solution for their financial problems. Mike Mazzeo of ESPNNewYork.com has the details and audio from ESPN New York 1050.
Mets suck, they should just gut the team.
You sound like a horse trainer. If the horse has a broken leg, just shoot it.
Nice completely worthless analogy. The Mets aren’t competing in the NL East this year, and likely not in the next few years. Trade Reyes and Wright for prospects and rebuild for the future.
Are you suggesting the Mets should not completely rebuild?
They are not too many pieces away from competing. It’s not that they have bad players, its that they don’t have the financial stability to get the pieces needed to compete.
No, I think bad players has a lot to do with it. Their rotation at this point is Pelfrey/Dickey/Niese/Capuano/Gee. Their 8th inning guy is Jason Isringhausen. Jason Bay has been a .256/.343/.396 hitter for them in 110 games. Wright has declined from posting 7/8 WAR seasons to 3.5/4 WAR seasons. Don’t kid yourself. They aren’t good. As for financial stability. Stable or not, they have a $145M payroll this year. Money isn’t the issue right now. That’s more than a fair amount to spend on a team to have a legitimate expectation that they won’t be in last place.
Maybe going forward finances could be an issue, but probably not. Even if they had the money to spend, who would they spend it on? They don’t have the pieces to pull off a trade for an impact major league player and the FA class of 2012 is Pujols/Fielder and then a whole bunch of role players. Are they supposed to go spend $20M/year on Jason Kubel to make the fans feel more confident about the financial situation?
If the Mets sign Kubel for any more than 5 a year i’d be pissed. If they sign Pujols or Field I’d again be pissed. I have patience if the Mets draft effectively and trade for some decent prospects my faith will remain with the team. Unfortunately, Most NY fans don’t possess this trait called patience. I look forward to the cheap seats at the very least it’s my only consolation.
My point was that there isn’t anyone to go out and pay for. There are three impact players in this year’s FA class and Reyes is one of them.
ok…so who do u trade Reyes/Wright/Ike to…and for whom?
I think that the only thing they can do is wait and build a little at a time. There doesn’t seem to be a solution on th horizon. AAA and AA are bare and the major league roster is chock full of guys that either a) passed their sell by dates, or b) should never have made a ML roster this season. And, if you think it’s bad now, imagine how bad it’s going to be when Beltran is gone. Him, Ike, and Reyes are the only guys keeping this team in games. There is no way they find a RF that is going to put up near a .900 OPS next season.
I don’t think you trade Ike. Not that he should be considered untouchable, but he’s young, cheap, and seems to be getting better. I don’t think that he’s a 1.000 OPS guy, but .280/.360/.500 is in reach. That’s a legitimate middle of the order bat, even if it isn’t spectacular offense from first. Add in good defense though, and I think that he can be a 4.5/5 WAR player.
As for Wright and Reyes, I don’t think that they can keep both with the payroll that I’m anticipating next year. Wright would bring back the better package because he’s under control for 2 1/2 seasons, but I don’t think that we can expect an insane deal for him. I think that we have to accept that Wright seems to be closer to the player that he was in 09/10 than the player he was from 05-08. That’s the guy that teams are trading for. He’s a 4/4.5 WAR player. Now granted, I think that if he goes to a better team, he’ll flourish. He can go back to trying to drive balls to right center and would probably thrive outside of Citi. But, the fact is that his value is diminished. He would still be a very hot commodity, but I don’t think that you can ask for the Teixeira deal. You might be lucky to get the Holliday deal. Call it two good prospects and some odds and ends. I know that Tigers fans have balked at including Turner, I figure that Cards fans would feel the same way about Shelby Miller.
The interesting thing with Wright is that a team that isn’t competing this year, but that thinks that they can compete in the next two might make a run at him. That might open up teams like Toronto, maybe even a Kansas City. I doubt it, but I would prefer to send him to a team with depth in their farm system, like Toronto. Maybe something like Brett Lawrie, a couple of their young arms (nothing crazy mind you, probably not Drabek) and a spare part gets it done.
I’m pretty sure the Holliday deal included some scrub named Carlos Gonzalez. Yeah, I’ll take that.
But he wasn’t CarGo then. When he was traded, he was a 23 year old OF that had hit .283/.344/.416 in AAA and .242/.273/.361 in 300 ABs in the majors. He was still a pretty highly regarded prospect, but I think he was ranked somewhere around #30 by baseball america. Actually, FMART was ranked higher than him, so you never know just who is going to pan out. My point was that you might not be able to get the equivalent of that deal in value for Wright. Of course, the Mets could just be excellent talent evaluators and pick out guys that will definitely be able to contribute, but there is an element of risk, so teams tend to go for the more highly regarded players. The Mets could trade Wright for three guys that no one has ever heard of and that don’t appear on any prospect lists and they could all turn out to be hall of famers, or they could trade him for 4 top 50 prospects and they could all turn out terrible. Who knows?
My point was that if Wright were putting up his 08 numbers, they could ask for a deal of that magnitude, but since he isn’t, they might not be able to get the same type of deal, even though Wright is under control for a longer period.
They’ve been just a few pieces from competing for a few years now. I think the rest of the baseball world has figured out that it ain’t happening.
It sucks to a mets fan with injuries, lawsuits, and poor performance
I call your injuries, and raise you two lawsuits.
I’ve always been pulling for Chris Young, shame to hear that he’s hurt again. Some guys are inconsistent and never look good after injuries, but he always seemed to be a very good pitcher whenever he was on the mound. Working with low velocity was never a problem for him. Not sure if he has any future left in baseball but I hope for the best.
As a Mets fan this is a tough blow, Young was clearly our best pitcher out of the gates. An already questionable Staff just added more question marks
Dickey
Pelf
Niese
Cap
Gee
Seems like the Mets always have to have the pen ready in every game
Makes letting go of Reyes real tough I’d say.
I think it makes letting go of Reyes even easier as more Mets fans will realize how inept our pitching is…
because trading reyes for phil humber is supposed to make met fans feel better?
So what you’re saying is…the team is completely in ruins. Not even like, well some players are gone this is full out “The NY Mets have lost any hope since their only good pitcher (who was a low risk signing) is done forever. Mejia is now useless too. Pirates are .500 though!
At least the Mets are trying to do something about getting back on track. You can give them a little respect for that. The Dodgers on the other hand, I don’t think McCourt has had much respect in the past decade and won’t be getting any anytime either.
The situations really aren’t very comparable. The fans never really loved the McCourts, but they got grudging respect from most fans, because they did bring us three postseasons, which is a lot more than Fox did when they owned the team. But that was before the divorce. Now, even if the fans did love the McCourts, we’d know that they’d still be fighting over who owns how much of the team. Which makes the entire situation impossible, not something to be gotten back on track.
I am going to have to slightly disagree with you. The situations are a little different but they are both in big financial troubles. You say that the Dodgers fans have hated the McCourts, which could be entirely true, but even last year the Dodgers had better attendance then the Mets. I was simply pointing out that the Mets are trying to rectify their situation in a business like manner, where as Frank has been head strong in his own way which is obviously not working.
The sources of the two teams’ financial problems are about as different as they possibly could be. At this point nobody really even knows who owns what part of the Dodgers and the McCourts show every sign of being willing to fight over it until kingdom come. There is simply no way of rectifying the situation short of MLB leaning on the McCourts until they are forced to sell the team. Finances really aren’t the problem here. Finances are a symptom of the problem, which is that the team is owned by greedy and hostile partners.
I wouldn’t mind a situation where Wright gets traded for a really nice package (mostly pitching) and Reyes is extended. Tha haul they could get for Wright would be better than what they would get for Reyes, and Reyes is more important to their success. Obviously it’d be nice to keep both, but looking forward this team is going to have to have to spend a lot of money on pitching to be good again and both Wright and Reyes are going to be in a position to demand big contracts. It’s not going to happen, but I don’t see why Mets fans are so against the idea of trading him.
Wright was just fine before he got the whole superstar thing on his shoulders…the AB against Chicago the last week of the season is a perfect microcosm of David’s struggles since the end of 2008-present…
last week of the season..WC spot on the line….tie game…bot of the 9th …0 outs…winning run on 3rd…DW works a 3-0 count…and swings and misses at ball 4..fouls off ball 5 and swings and misses at ball 6….this was hitting in front of a scorching hot delgado and beltran…that to me sums up DW’s past few seasons
Put David on a small-market team…or a team with other superstars that the owners are not having to force him to be the franchise face for…and I think DW just relaxes and goes back to hitting .320 with 30 HR and 110 RBI’s
No idea why everyone’s solution is to get rid of 2 of your best players…Since when does getting rid of quality make sense? Shouldn’t you BUILD around those guys? Trading Wright or Reyes for a bunch of unknown prospects does nothing for this year nor future years. Unless they’re going to get a Bryce Harper, Mike Trout, etc. (they won’t) then why bother risking giving up quality players for prospects that may never turn out to be anything close to these guys, let alone better? To trade for another ‘possible ace’? We’ve been there and done that many of times. The Mets are practically known for trading away guys they shouldn’t have, why continue that trend now? You keep Wright and Reyes along with some of the other young talent like Davis, Mejia and such and you build from there. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it sure as hell wasn’t built by knocking everything down after the first pieces were in place. They don’t NEED to build their farm system by trading…
And please don’t say ‘because they can’t afford them’ because they can. Just because they’re going through a financial situation doesn’t mean they’ll have a payroll the size of the Rays…Maybe they can’t go out and get Pujols this year, but they CAN afford to keep a few guys.
Agreed. Have been sick of the philosophy that a prospect can be the “next Jose Reyes”. Well wait….isn’t having Jose Reyes already better? I don’t understand the logic.
The Mets’ ownership and that of the Dodgers are scalliwags in the community of baseball owners. Their kind should be banned from the sport for their fiscal shenanigans..
Even though having a fire sale seems like the most logical way to the solution, you have to remember The Mets organization always seems to know how to injure or ruin the prospects they hav ever had. So if we gt rid of everyone to get propects, will the Mets front office keep them healthy????? I believe we just hope and pray that the Wilpons have to sell and that will be a good way to start over……………