Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Another Mistake

The Mets will never learn. Mike Cuddyer is the latest old (36), injured (48 games last year), overpaid ($21M over two years) veteran the Mets hope will finally hit for them.
Cuddyer is coming to them from the Rockies where his stats were obviously inflated by the ballpark. And like all the others he will surely suffer in CitiField.
And even if he were to hit pretty well, he is an absolute butcher defensively, perhaps a worse outfielder than Lucas Duda was.
I grant you that the Mets didn't have many better options to play left field, but my my concern is that he won't be much better than a Nieuwenhuis/den Decker combo would be (including defense and baserunning) and his arrival will result in fewer at bats (and defensive chances) for Juan Lagares -- because Terry Collins is a moron who thinks you need to keep guys fresh (and he has a crush on Eric Young Jr).
Once again the Mets have turned to free agency to improve the problems with their team because they think that is what they are supposed to do and they think that showing the fan base you're committed to winning is important even when doing so actually makes it less likely that you will win.
So Cuddyer is old, unlikely to be healthy for two years, terrible on defense and likely to see a significant decrease in offensive production based solely on home parks.
The Mets will never learn.

2 comments:

Damino said...

I agree with your central thesis 100%, but I think you're overstating this a bit considering he's only getting 2 years and $21 million. This is not Jason Bay or Bobby Bonilla.

I hate that they had to give up a top draft pick for him, and I hate his defense. But he might be worth $10.5 million/year if he can stay reasonably healthy.

I'm not happy about this move - at all - but I'm not entirely disgusted either, and I sort of understand it given the other options for left field.

jleary said...

I would think EY Jr. will be getting non-tendered, so juan should still get his AB's. But who the hell knows with this team. I don't really like any of the OF's on the free agent market. They should see who can be had in trades before spending money like this.
I am just happy Jimmy Rollins rejected a trade to the Mets!!