The New York Mets made a semi-big splash a few days ago with the signing of Michael Cuddyer. This was step one in an intricate offseason plan to build on last season and mold a championship team. A plan that team GM Sandy Alderson must be aggressive with this offseason. A point that assistant GM John Ricco made in a recent interview.
In regards to Cuddyer, Ricco told Newsday, “I think this is a message that we’re going to be aggressive. And right out of the box, we saw a guy we liked and we got him.”
With the outfield pretty much locked up now, the team turns their attention to the short stop position. Reports in the past few days point to this direction. On Tuesday, the team inquired to the Phillies about Jimmy Rollins. While Rollins turned down any potential trade to the Mets and the Phillies asked far too much, it shows where the Mets are thinking.
The team is looking at trade options. The most coveted would be Cuddyer’s former teammate Troy Tulowitzki. That option seems to be dying out however. Among him are the Cubs’ Starlin Castro and the White Sox’ Alexei Ramirez. They’re even reported to be looking through options with the Diamondbacks and Mariners, among others.
The team doesn’t seem too high on spending for a multiple year contract for a free agent to fill the void. When looking at the list of free agent short stops, it’s easy to see why. Big names like Hanley Ramirez and Stephen Drew will be asking for a lot.
However, there is an option that could be less expensive and solve several issues for the team. That would be Jed Lowrie. Lowrie brings three things: playoff experience, fits Citi Field and affordability.
First, Lowrie has done something that only David Wright and Curtis Granderson have done among the current Mets players; play in the playoffs. In five series, or 18 playoffs games, with the Red Sox and A’s, Lowrie has nine hits in 56 at bats.
While stats like that may not blow fans away, it’s more than the majority of the Mets roster can say. Some experience is better than none, particularly as the team is coming down the home stretch of the regular season and trying to make a playoff push.
Next, Lowrie’s hitting style fits the Mets home ballpark, Citi Field. He is a switch hitter that has a little power and some speed for extra bases hit into the gaps. In a comparable Oakland A’s ballpark, Lowrie hit 74 doubles, five triples and 21 home runs in a combined two seasons.
He has the ability to turn a long single into a double for the heart of the order to have RISP opportunities or a double into a triple for a sure RBI chance. This is similar to the two players the Mets already have competing for the short stop position, Wilmer Flores and Ruben Tejada.
The difference is consistency. Lowrie has double digits in doubles in all but one season. Among those double digit seasons, his lowest number (14 in 2010, 2011) was still higher than Tejada’s lowest (11 in 2014) and Flores’ totals (five in 2013 13 in 2014). Also, Tejada has never had a season with multiple triples. Neither has Flores. Lowrie has four seasons with that.
Finally, Lowrie will be much more affordable than other free agents or players the Mets make a trade for. He made $5.25M in Oakland last season. After a down year, it’s almost a certainty that he will have to take a contract that is incentive based and far less guaranteed money. This should make his contract much more attractive to the Mets than a Hanley Ramirez or a Tulowitzki type.
While, Tejada is locked up until 2018 and is slated to make around $1.5M this coming year, the Mets don’t seem to believe in him as the starter. He’s going to be paid like a bench player. Flores isn’t arbitration eligible until 2017 and is making the league minimum on his first contract. He, like Tejada, doesn’t have the faith of the Mets brass, otherwise they wouldn’t be shopping around for a short stop.
In closing, Jed Lowrie is experienced in making the playoffs, hitting in spacious ballparks like Citi Field and is far more affordable than other free agents or trade targets on the team radar. While the Mets aren’t eying him right now, they should certainly give him a serious consideration as the options begin to dwindle down.
Hopefully, they consider him sooner than later. While he’s still available.
While you write his offensive résume, the guy that’s going to play now also is offensively inclined. Why not write that his defense has slipped and he shows no power? How can he be better than Flores is they are both offensive options and below average defensively? We need a clear upgrade, and Tulo, Castro, ARamirez we know are better. That’s the player to look at.
agreed, generally.
You make a move to improve, not just to make a move. Lowrie’s defense is not up to even Ruben Tejada’s ability.
We simply can’t pair Lowrie with Murphy much like we can’t pair Flores with Murphy.
One to watch: Jose Ramirez, Indians. The Indians fell just a little short of the playoffs with only one pitcher getting to 30 starts, two to 25 starts. They have Francisco Lindor coming up.
Ramirez is a great glove, OBP guy with good speed and at 22 and 5-9, has more pop than you’d think. At some point in the future, combined with Herrera, you’d have a dynamic middle infield.
A combination of two ML pitchers (Bartolo back to Cleveland? Too easy!) and Flores should do it.
Yes, I do know that Lindor didn’t do well in AAA so the deal will take some time to jell.
I’d be willing to wait on that deal until spring training, so Lindor has the chance to prove himself.
How about having a proven glove here that could be an upgrade over Flores if Flores can’t cut it, because let’s face it, if the SS is going to hit #8 anyway, what’s the big deal?
I am thinking of players like Evereth Cabrera who has good speed and may get cut by the Padres, or other players that may be cheaper to acquire…
Evereth probably gets dropped by SD.
Whether you go with someone who believes driving around with dope in the car is a good idea … not to mention, getting into 180 games in two years at age 26-27?
Somebody’s going to play that guy and get a leadoff hitter that steals bases and picks it at SS. I just don’t think its Sandy’s cup of tea.
I’m sorry, and someone told me about his habits yesterday and I forgot.
Never mind. Cancel that thought.
Drew is going to be take less years than Lowrie and therefore will be cheaper. I’d rather have him.
Career Stats per 162 games:
Jed Lowrie – .261/.330/.411
Stephen Drew – .256/.332/.425
Both very similar over there careers, but Drew had a WRC+ over 100 in ’06, ’08, ’10, and ’13. Lowrie had a WRC+ in ’10, ’12, and ’13. Defensively, they were similar in 2014 with Lowrie’s dWAR at -0.2 and Drew’s dWAR at 0.2. Over their careers Drew was the better fielder, but Lowrie did not consistently start at short in the majors over a season until 2012. Lowrie will be entering his age 31 season and Drew will be entering his age 32 season, and they seem to have gone past their primes.
I think that the Mets are better off having Flores at shortstop than either of these two because it will cost them significantly less money. Flores has the potential to be a much bigger bat than either of them ever were. They are both coming off down years. We do not entirely know what we have in Flores either.
He came up briefly in 2013 before he dealt with an ankle injury. Once he came up in in August for the remainder of the season he performed pretty well. In August he hit .253/.298/.342 and in September he hit .267/.302/.489. In those two months he hit 5 of his 6 home runs for the year and knocked in 22 runs. Over an entire season that averages out to be around 20 home runs and 80 runs batted in, which I think the Mets would take in a heartbeat. Flores really has not found his stroke against lefties, which as he continues to play should fix itself and that will bump his home run totals and runs batted in totals. I understand that all of this is best case scenario, but if the Mets could get that kind of production out of the shortstop stop with a slight lag in defense then it would definitely be worth to keep Flores there. If there is a potential to move him over to second base then it should be done, but Murphy should not be traded just for the sake of moving Flores over to second.
Here is what i think of Flores and his “offensive” potential
https://mets360.com/?p=23528 First comment.
Also, 5 HR’s in 2 months averages out to 15 Hr’s a year, not 20. (6 months in a season). And 2 of those 5 HR’s came off the scrub known as Brad Penny. Unless you think that Flores will get to face scrubby pitchers like that all year, you should throw those away. So really it’s 3-4 Hrs in 2 months, which is 9-12 extrapolated over a full season. Projecting anything above 15 hrs is just wishful optimism (unless he starts juicing), as his career high in the minors was just 18.
I got my stat based off a 650 plate appearance season by Flores, which is not all that likely that he will get that many, but it is what he would do over that time.
Not saying that he is going to be the next Miguel Cabrera, but in 4 seasons he never hit more than 10 and only total 28 homers. Flores played in about twice as many games that Cabrera did, but had three times as many homers. Look at Cabrera back in 2003, he looks skinny compared to how he looks now, he filled out, which Flores could do in the coming years.
I do believe that Flores could easily hit more than 20 because as I stated above Flores has not hit lefties well in the majors. But in Triple-A in 2013 he hit .348/.394/.617 and in 2014 he hit .333/.373/.646 off of lefties. If he can bounce his numbers against lefties somewhere close to that and continue to hit righties the way he does that would be phenomenal. I do not expect Flores to start mashing lefties right away, but I expect him to hit a better than he has previously. All of his homers last year in the majors were off of righties and that will likely change.
For Cabrera, he was on most prospects lists as a top 25 guy. So even though he didn’t have great minors stats, he had scouts backing him.
Flores? Dropped off most top 100 lists in 2011. So he has neither the minors stats nor the scouts backing him.
Like i said earlier, a lot of it is just wishful optimism as there really isn’t much hard evidence to back up 20 Hrs.
If Drew becomes cheap enough (i’m thinking around 4-6 mil), for a team that wants to win now, they should absolutely do it as his floor is much higher than Flores’s
Drew isn’t worth a meatball
I don’t think there’s any way that the Mets sign a SS. I could see signing a reserve middle infielder, but if a SS is replacing Flores, it will be via trade.
I’d surrender a 2nd round pick for HanRam, and I think he’s justifiable at 4/$60MM.
And I think that Sandy would sign him in that range. I don’t think HanRam would look at that contract.
There has to be a reason the Mets scouted this guy. Maybe Cuddyer used up the extra dollars we had for him, I don’t know.
But a lineup that read Grandy, Murphy, HanRam, Wright, Cuddyer, Duda, TdA, Lagares (in no particular order) trumps everyone.
Ramirez is going to be getting a bigger pay day than that for sure. He made 16 million last year and that will probably be increased after a decent year and a lack of shortstop options and his willingness to play other positions. That is a fantastic order, but I do not see Alderson shelling out the money to sign Ramirez.
Victor Martinez apparently just signed for $17MM; he played a lot of games, finished 2nd in the MVP vote.
HRam got that $16MM contract to play his age 28-30 seasons, and he had just come off a period where he played pretty much always was around 150+ at SS.
Yeah, I’m dreaming at $16MM. But not by a whole lot. Anybody paying Hanley Ramirez a lot more than than VMart is nuts.
The team that is nuts is the Tigers giving Vmart a 4 year deal. This is the same team that gave Fielder 9 years, and extended Cabrera when his value couldn’t be higher.
Differences between HanRam and Vmart
Age: HanRam is 30. Vmart is 35. 5 years is 1/3 of most player’s lifetimes
Position: HanRam can play SS, not very well, but he can. Vmart is a DH.
Vmart clearly had a career year in 2014.
His career highs in BA/OBP/SLG were .316/.391/.505 and he blew all 3 marks out of the water with .335/.409/.565. He hadn’t topped 900 OPS ever in his career this year. Meanwhile, Hanley has done it 4 times (although 1 was a shortened season)
Players care about years a lot more than AAV. Hanley should have no trouble getting 5/75, and i think he can top 100 mil.
Ham Ram plays a crappy SS and will get injured and play about 80 games each season.
I think something is really going to have to fall in Alderson lap for him to trade pitching for shortstop. Flores was decent enough defensively, and showed enough offensive pop to warrant a significant try-out early next year. By not trading now, those young guys in Triple-A and on the big league squad can hopefully show why they are valuable, and a trade can be made mid-year if Flores can’t cut it. There is absolutely no rush to get another infielder. If both pitching in NY and Vegas struggle and lose value, then Alderson has bigger problems to deal with than simply upgrading SS, and unless he’s horrendous, Flores should then just finish the year to see what he’s made of.
How’s this for a blockbuster?
Bautista, Reyes
(2015 salaries-36m)
for
Granderson, Colon, Lagares, Wheeler, Murphy, Nimmo.
(2015 salaries-36m)
Blue Jays get to boast about having one of the quickest rotations (and oldest lol)
You can sort of break it down into 2 trades: Reyes for Granderson and Murphy and Bautista for Colon, Lagares, Wheeler and Nimmo.
Money works out for 2015 too.
Mdd/Kirk would fight for the CF job, and we’d need to dumpster dive for a 5th starter to keep the seat warm for Noah.
I want to win right now and I wouldn’t do this. Are you a Jays fan?
Top 10 talent does not come cheap.
The Braves paid a similar package for Justin Upton, who even isn’t as good as Bautista.
I don’t think much of Wheeler or Lagares and I want to sell high and if we’re going to have overpaid players on our rosters, they might as well be fan favorites.
Patrick, the shame of it is that last year was the year we should have seen Flores. If it’s Collins not playing him because he didn’t believe in him or there wasn’t an organizational plan in place to see as many youngsters as possible, it is terrible that this team seems to have so many opportunities to excel in time and financial advantages of being in NYC but it cannot or does not take those advantages seriously.
The Mets should upgrade at SS to increase their chances of a playoff spot. The middle infield defense is too weak with Flores/Murphy. Trading Murphy, even for prospects, would free up his $8m which could be applied to a SS salary. For those who believe in Flores bat, then move him to second base, where defensively he is better than Murphy. I would prefer Herrera at second base and Flores as the back up infielder.
Lowrie is a better fielder than Flores, he had a OPS+ 119 in 2013 so he has hit in the past. Lowrie would make the Mets a better team so I would consider him a fit. There are also better choices such as Castro and Ramirez out there but those choices will cost players. The Mets have time this offseason to see if they can do better.