Sandy Alderson, this is your mess: A top five countdown

The Mets made history in 2021. In all of Baseball history, the 2021 New York Mets are the team that spent the longest time in first place in a season and finished that same year with a win-loss record under .500. When something like this happens, there is always a lot of blame to go around. However, five choices by Sandy Alderson were the biggest factors of all in how a promising 2021 season turned into an historical debacle.

Alderson, this is your mess.

5. Failing to properly evaluate the hitters on his roster

Alderson seemed to base a lot of his offseason decisions regarding the team’s offense on the assumption that he already had a number of homegrown hitters he could build around. What that means is that he appeared to put a lot of faith into the offensive numbers put up in the Covid-19 shortened 2020 season, specifically those by Michael Conforto and Dominic Smith. However, Alderson failed to account for those players’ careers prior to 2021. Conforto had settled in during the 2018 and 2019 seasons as a solid every day outfielder with some power. He had an OPS of about 830 over those two years and a cumulative WAR of 6.3. In 2021, his WAR was on pace to be 6.3 if he had played the full year and his OPS was nearly 100 points higher. No one would have thought he would have had this bad of a year in a contract year, but one has to assume based on the roster construction, that Conforto was expected to perform up to his 2021 expectations which was not a safe assumption based on his career to that point. Smith was an even worse over calculation as his OPS was over 100 points higher than it had ever been and nearly half of his career up until that point had resulted in offensive numbers that are startlingly similar to this year. The over estimations on Conforto and Smith, were a huge part of the Mets having one of the worst offenses in all of baseball this year.

4. The Trade Deadline

The Mets acquired Rich Hill, Trevor Williams and Javier Baez at the trade deadline. All three players have performed well, but that doesn’t mean the deadline was a success. The idea of adding players to a roster has to be twofold. It has to generate success and has to be what’s good for the team in the long run. Of these three, only Williams is definitely going to be in the organization next year. Hill is a total rental and Baez is probably going to be too expensive of a player considering that he doesn’t really fit what the Mets need next year. Yes, as discussed in number 5, they need a more trustworthy bat in the lineup, but the team needs outfielders and Baez doesn’t play that position. Someone like Kris Bryant is a far better match and he was available at the deadline. Also, the Mets probably could have acquired Jose Berrios, which would have been a far better acquisition than Hill. Yes, Berrios would have meant trading more prospects, but the Mets were obviously willing to do that by trading Pete Crow-Armstrong, so why not spend that prospect on a player you had control over next year and could be a top 2 pitcher in your rotation.

3. McCann Vs Realmuto

The Mets needed a catcher after the 2020 season. They did not have an immediate replacement in the minor leagues and needed an upgrade of what they had. J.T. Realmuto was the gem of the catching free agents and from all reports, the Mets barely even looked at him. They focused early on James McCann and went through a long negotiating period until they signed him for 4 years and 40.6 million dollars. In the first year of that contract, the Mets have gotten a -0.1 WAR out of the 8.15 million dollars McCann is receiving. Tomas Nido, the Mets primary backup catcher this year, made 556,000 dollars and had a WAR of 0.4. Patrick Mazeika, the third most used catcher on the Mets this year, made the league minimum and had the same WAR as McCann. That means, the Mets could have gone with two backups and gotten more production. Realmuto is a year younger than McCann and had a WAR of 3.5 this year. Not much more to say about all of that.

2. Kumar Rocker

The Mets did not sign its first round draft pick. Yes, the organization will get the 11th pick in next year’s draft along with its 2022 selection, but by not signing Kumar Rocker and sacrificing later selections in the draft to give Rocker a maximum signing bonus (revoked of course), the Mets also missed out on adding more depth to a depleted farm system. Alderson stated that was a goal of his going into the season, but by trading away Crow-Armstrong and not signing Rocker, the Mets now only have one first round pick in the system (Brett Baty) from their last four selections. That’s not how you build a system or a franchise in general and is further proof of the lack of a plan under Alderson’s leadership in 2021.

1.The General Manager, Head of Baseball operations fiasco

Alderson was hired by Steve Cohen to be the president of the team. His one major job was to hire a head of baseball operations and help that person hire a GM and develop everything else the organization would need to thrive. Not only did he not find a head of baseball operations, but his first two attempts at a general manager, Jared Porter and Zack Scott were general failures. Porter was barely on the job before allegations of sexual harassment lead to his quick dismissal. Scott couldn’t prove himself enough to eliminate the interim tag from his title and has been on administrative leave for a month after being arrested for drunk driving. This lack of leadership has caused the organizational rebuild promised by Alderson and Cohen to be exceptionally delayed and a year later it feels like the team has made no progress.

One saying in baseball is that a player always plays to the back of his baseball card. Another is that the manager or general manager can’t make that player perform. There is truth to both of those statements, but to state that the Mets failure in 2021 is because of that is giving Alderson a break that he doesn’t deserve. A year in, and the Mets still don’t have the structure put in place that leads to long term success. Alderson needs to hire a head of baseball operations as soon as possible, so that person can start to put his stamp on this team and have a full offseason to do that, develop an analytics department, work on the scouting department, etc. That way, Alderson can go back to overseeing things and not force Mets fans through one more year of disappointment.