The Mets have designated outfielder Chris Young for assignment, the club announced. Matt den Dekker will be recalled to take his spot on the active roster.
Young, 30, signed a one-year, $7.25MM deal over the offseason to join the Mets. Though he had suffered through some injury and performance issues over the prior two seasons, Young seemed a reasonable bounceback candidate. After all, he demonstrated an above-average bat and good enough defense and baserunning to put up two straight seasons of four (fWAR) or five (rWAR) wins above replacement in 2010-11.
A return to form has obviously not come to pass in New York, as Young owns a .205/.283/.346 line through 287 plate appearances with eight home runs and seven stolen bases. Projection systems ZiPS and Steamer still expect Young to be an approximately league average hitter the rest of the way, but the Mets had little reason to wait on that turnaround at this point. With den Dekker lighting up PCL pitching to the tune of a .936 OPS, he’ll get a chance to audition for a big league job next year.
Never saw that one coming! Sarcasm
Considering how long it took, I kind of didn’t see that coming lol
$1 million per home run or only $150,000 per hit. This didn’t turn out like every single person predicted
Yep, nobody thought this could have been a good signing back in November: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/mets-land-bargain-in-chris-young/
There is such thing as a bad one year deal! What a waste.
There is when that player was taking time away from younger and likely more productive players while he was given every opportunity to earn his pay.
Not to mention that 7.5 mil could have been used to sign someone else…
In some alternate reality, Chris Young is having a big year while Nelson Cruz is getting cut.
Hindsight bias is king.
Hindsight doesn’t have anything to do with the Young deal being a mistake from the start.
He had a disastrous season in 2013. The Mets signed him early on in the offseason and paid more than they had to by a few million. Which was money that could have been spent elsewhere.
No one in their right mind thought Young would have a better year than Cruz…
Baseball Ref. link it to the wrong Chris Young.
A lot of Phils fans wanted CY to be signed as a replacement for Ben Revere based on 2010-11 being decent years, despite the fact that he was awful in 2012-13. I never understood that and was shocked that the Mets signed him.
Of course. I manually input the link, but it must have replaced it when I ran our linker for den Dekker’s name.
BTW, he was pretty good in 2012 until he was injured. I thought it was a reasonable signing at the time — didn’t work out, but that’s often the case when you are getting a vet on a one-year deal.
As Gerald Ford once said, Our long national nightmare is over.
mets can now play above .500 the rest of the way
Awful, incompetent signing by Alderson. 7 million for a guy who had one decent year. This move comes 2 months far too late. Young is responsible for at least 2-3 loses. His highlight was the Yankees series. He is easily my least favorite Met, ever.
Chris Young had two objectively very good seasons, and he’s had two decent ones. I agree that he should have been cut months ago, but you’re painting the signing in a worse light than it actually is.
Us A’s fans tried to warn you, Alderson…
Took long enough but maybe they did learn something after the Jason Bay debacle.
After witnessing fiascos such as Luis Castillo, Oliver Perez and Jason Bay this certainly ranks low on the scale of Met missteps – wasn’t a cancer in the clubhouse though as some, just didn’t produce and it was more a question of return on investment. I wish him well, no doubt someone will pick him up.