Scarce resources

I wrote this a while ago and meant to post it, but somehow never did. It's slightly outdated, but I feel that I should post it unchanged, for reasons that I cannot really explain. Here it is.

Mere months ago, Sandy Alderson was installed as the Mets' general manager, and from many of his early comments on the team, it's clear that the Alderson regime (including scouting guru and Moneyball star Paul DePodesta) is putting a good deal of weight on the acquisition of young talent and its development in the farm system. Partially because of this, and partially because of the Mets' slow start to 2011, there have been calls from some quarters to throw in the towel on this season and this incarnation of the Mets, and begin trading the more market-valuable players on the team for prospects. Honestly there's not a lot there, so when people say "there are no untouchables" and "the farm system should be restocked," what they're basically doing it calling for is the exit of David Wright and Jose Reyes.

I agree with the tenor of the regime thus far - that is, that the draft and youth development are important, and further that they are more effective team building strategies than simply buying the big free agent of the offseason year after year - and I agree with the idea that in theory, no player on the roster should be dogmatically untouchable. Everyone should be available, but Wright and Reyes not only should be the last to go, but they should be traded only in the event of a monumental, earth-shattering offer.

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The value of a star

David Wright and Jose Reyes are two of the best position players that have ever graced the Met payroll. Through 2010, according to baseball-reference's version of the Wins Above Replacement statistic (in case you're unfamiliar, WAR measures a player's individual contribution to his team's win total), Wright and Reyes are the third and eighth-best position players in the franchise's history.

Granted, the Mets have not been that good at developing position players throughout their history, and most of their best players spent significant periods of time playing for other teams. WAR is a cumulative statistic - that is, the longer one plays, the more wins he accumulates. David Wright is 28, and Jose Reyes is 27. Neither one has accumulated 4,000 plate appearances as a Met. Both Wright and Reyes have a ways to go and among the leaders in franchise WAR, only Carlos Beltran is still active (and sadly, most likely is in his final year as a Met). If both continue at anything resembling their career average pace, they are likely to continue to ascend that list.

The average season for both Wright and Reyes places them in the outer fringes of the elite level. When you look at WAR as a rate statistic per 700 plate appearances (roughly the number a player will have in a 160-game span), David Wright clocks in at 5.25, with Jose Reyes at 4.08. What does that mean? In 2010, in 675 plate appearances, Matt Holliday had a WAR of 5.3. Ichiro Suzuki, in 732 PA, had a WAR of 4.1. In other words, the average years for Wright and Reyes are roughly the seasons that Holliday and Ichiro had last year.

Would you ever even dream of trading away Ichiro? It's not outside of the realm of possibility that if Jack Zduriencik tried to pull that, he'd be arrested for crimes against Seattle.

Matt Holliday's case is a pretty good example of why trading a really good player in his prime (or thereabouts) is a bad idea. He's been traded twice in the past few years - in November 2008, from Colorado to Oakland; and again in July of 2009, from Oakland to St. Louis. Both situations were relatively similar to the one in which the Mets currently find themselves - teams that are likely not going to win anything that are trying to rebuild for the future by trading a star player for young prospects.

When the Rockies dealt Holliday, they got three players in return: Greg Smith, Huston Street, and Carlos Gonzalez. Since the trade (two full seasons, then the start of this one), Holliday has a rWAR (again, that's Baseball Reference Wins Above Replacement) of 11.8. Greg Smith, in very limited big-league time, comes in at -0.2. Huston Street, as a reliever with injury problems, hasn't pitched much, so he registers a rWAR of 3.1. Last year's surprise MVP candidate CarGo (an awful nickname, by the way) has a post-trade rWAR of 6.1. That's 9 wins above replacement level from the Rockies' haul against the 11.8 Holliday's put up himself. Take into account the fact that Gonzalez is young (meaning that he will probably last longer than Holliday, but also that his continued performance is unproven), and I'm going to call this trade somewhere between a wash and a loss for the Rockies, depending on your projections for Gonzalez's future.

The A's only kept Holliday for about half a season before moving him along. In return, they got Brett Wallace, Shane Peterson, and Clayton Mortensen. None are with the A's major league squad. Wallace was traded to the Blue Jays for a fellow prospect (Michael Taylor, who also has not reached the majors). Peterson plays for Sacramento in the Pacific Coast League. Mortensen was traded to the Rockies after being designated for assignment, which usually isn't a great sign.

These are all gifted baseball players, and some or all of them might turn out to be great. Carlos Gonzalez (among others) has a shot at that. But here you can see the volatility of the baseball prospect: one becomes an MVP candidate, one is traded again and again, several remain in the minor leagues. You can't know what you're going to get from a young player - and yet, Matt Holliday just keeps producing at his expected high level. If the Mets trade Wright or Reyes, they might get the next Carlos Gonzalez, or they might get the next Lastings Milledge or Alex Escobar. There's no guarantee. These proven players are so good that it's not easy to replace them, especially with young players who may or may not pan out. Trading away prospects is almost always a better strategy than holding onto them, and the reverse is also true - if you have an elite player, and you have any chance at keeping that player for the long term, you should do so.

A reason to watch

Let's be honest, the Mets are not very good and probably won't be all season. Sandy Alderson and his posse are smart though, and they will have this franchise in shape - from top to bottom - very soon. However, I fear that too much losing may alienate the fanbase, and that will only be exacerbated by jettisoning the only two legitimate, healthy star-caliber players the Mets have. That may not seem like a huge deal, but when you have a team with the recent media buzz that the Mets have (spoiler alert: it's not good), you need all the help you can get when trying to attract any kind of free agent. You also need that help in negotiating with high-level amateur talent, which the Mets should be doing (internationally and through the draft) at a high level; knowing the history of Alderson and his cadre, this is something that's likely to happen. Scott Boras and people like him can use things like this to milk more and more money out of a team, which in turn will reduce the team's ability to draft or sign large quantities of numbers - the kind of numbers you need to guard against the volatility that we saw in the Matt Holliday trades.

To maintain any kind of positivity in the Mets fanbase, David Wright and Jose Reyes need to stay in Queens. To win now and in the future, David Wright and Jose Reyes must be Mets. To get the kind of players the Mets will need in the future, Wright and Reyes need to stay with the team. Players like them don't come along every day and are hard to replace, and they give the fans a reason to watch in a time when there isn't a lot of winning happening. There is no reason to trade Wright and Reyes aside from a pure shake-up move. There is no good reason to trade them.

The revolution begins...at 2 PM Eastern

Today begins a new era in Mets baseball, one that honestly should have begun years ago - the post-Omar era. Sandy Alderson will officially be named the new general manager, and based on what I've read about him I'm very excited about the next four years.

I'm not a fool, I don't expect miracles from Alderson and his new regime; in fact, quite the opposite - I'd bet the Mets of 2011 won't be appreciably better than the Mets of 2010, unless the changes made in the roster are more drastic than I think they will be. The changes that Alderson will bring, though, are going to go far beyond the team's win-loss record, and that's what excites me.

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Over the past decade or so, the Mets have been a wreck, both on and off the field. They went to the World Series in 2000 and were arguably the best team in baseball in 2006 (though they lost in the NLCS). Aside from that, as a baseball-playing group, they've failed. They were "contenders" who missed the playoffs in 2001, 2007 and 2008 (spectacularly so in the latter two years). Every other year in the 21st century, the Mets have been flat-out bad. And I'm sure that it goes without saying that rooting for a crappy team isn't much fun.

If anything, the Mets have been even worse off the field. They haven't had quite the issues with players that some teams have, Francisco Rodriguez and Johan Santana notwithstanding. The real issue has been the non-player staff. Let's go through the greatest hits:

- In 2009, VP for player development Tony Bernazard challenged minor leaguers to fight after a game. The incident included Bernazard taking his shirt off, a la Jersey Shore.

- Shortly after that incident came to light, Bernazard nearly got in a fight with K-Rod after a game, for no discernible reason. He kept his shirt on that time.

- Obviously, getting in fights with the players isn't good, so Omar Minaya (finally) fired Bernazard. Simple enough? Well, not if the general manager of the Mets openly accuses a beat writer of "lobby" for a job with the team. (Read this transcript of the press conference. It pretty much explains all of the problems that Omar Minaya had as GM of the Mets.)

Beside all that, actual player decisions were made in a totally irrational fashion. Rich, long-term contracts were given to ageing and inconsistent players. Terrible trades were made. Player injuries were handled in a haphazard and simply dangerous fashion. Player development was, to put it bluntly, a joke. In short, Omar Minaya's Mets did everything wrong.

As a fan of a team, you want to be able to defend against outside mockery. When rival teams' fans take shots at your team, you want to be able to have something, anything, to use to defend your team. When Omar was in charge, there was no way to do that. The team was run in an irrational manner, and there's no way to rationally defend irrationality.

And that is a big reason why I'm thrilled about the installation of Sandy Alderson. I don't expect domination. I don't even expect a championship. I am smart enough to know that it's really hard to win a World Series, and that while fans should definitely hope to win, expecting to win is really only the realm of the arrogant and the egotistical. But what I do expect is rationality. I'm listening to Alderson's introductory press conference right now, and what I'm hearing is what I expected, based on what I know about Alderson - a smart, well-spoken man who thinks rather than feels. When Minaya was in charge, it seemed that most decisions were made based on faulty reasoning and gut reactions. Alderson says things like "the mathematics don't lie" and that on-base percentage and slugging percentage are important. That's the way to build a team that has the ability to win a championship, and more than anything, it's the way to make a franchise respectable again.

The Mets may not win the pennant every year for the next decade - in fact, they probably won't. But at least we know that the people in charge know what they're doing, that they will create and execute a plan, and that the plan will be based on sound principles. We know that we no longer have to fear that at any moment, team officials could be forcing a guy with a concussion to play, or challenging 20-year-old kids to fights. The team will not be a laughingstock, and that's a damn good first step.

This is awesome: IKE FREAKING DAVIS

Ike Davis is my new personal hero. I've already commissioned a gold statue.

Stephen Strasburg is a chump. There's no way he can hit a ball this far. Ike Davis is already better than Albert Pujols, and he's closing fast on Lou Gehrig. Not quite to Keith Hernandez's level yet, though.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Stephen Strasburg is not a chump. This is all hyperbole.

Oliver "Sunk Cost" Perez

Oliver Perez is not very good. I fact, he sucks. He's been lifted from the starting rotation and is now being used basically as a mop-up reliever. Considering he's in the midst of a 3 year, $36 million contract, that's not the best situation. However, he is contractually able to decline a minor-league assignment to fix what's wrong with him, so he's just sucking in the majors.

I saw this today from SNY's Howard Megdal, and I think I agree. Perez just needs to go.
More stuffI don't want to just reprint Megdal's whole column, so I'll just share this.

The two comparisons in the minds of Mets fans are Steve Trachsel and Bobby Jones, of course. Jones, lost after three starts in 2000, went to Triple-A, and returned to pitch to a respectable 4.46 ERA. Trachsel, who pitched to an ERA over 8 to start 2001 in roughly the same number of innings that Perez has thrown in 2010, went to the Minors, returning about three weeks later to pitch to a sparkling 3.34 ERA for the remainder of the season.

Both Trachsel and Jones had more career Major League wins than Perez, and both were older, likely making the move that much harder to stomach. But both of them wanted to get better, and both of them, especially Trachsel, found additional success in their careers by doing so.

I don't get Perez's motivation for refusing the minor league assignment. Obviously, based on the cases Megdal cites, it's worked before in the Mets organization. He can't possibly be happy throwing only mop-up innings, unless he's even weirder than I think he is. And unless he's just dumb (which I don't think is the case), he can't possibly have not noticed the fact that he is terrible. He is not going to get the chance to work out his issues in the big leagues, which is one move of Jerry Manuel's with which I actually agree (and possibly the only one this year).

He's either going to be a bad long reliever for the next year and a half, go to the minors, or get cut. The former is an untenable situation. The second is a good stop-gap measure at the very least, and could have the potential to help both Oliver Perez and the Mets. But if he refuses that, the last resort should be to end the relationship. That money is gone, and keeping Perez won't get it back. If he is unwilling to do what it takes to get better, he should not be on this team.