Brodie Van Wagenen Leads Another Hapless Season of Futility for Mets
Admittedly, it’s early, but it certainly seems as if Seattle mugged the Mets in broad daylight in December 2018. As in so many other recent seasons, the Mets are once again stumbling out of the gate to the certainty of yet another hapless season of futility.
Robinson Cano looks so done at the plate. Edwin Diaz, on the other hand, has pitched acceptably, perhaps even well. But does a team that will likely flirt with .500 the rest of the way, if they can even keep their head above water, need a top closer? This seems like a basic baseball 101 question.
The answer is, no it doesn’t, Brodie. That’s Brodie Van Wagenen, the recently hired Mets’ General Manager and the man who green-lighted the trade. And what a trade it was. A New York Mets special. The kind of trade to keep robbing the Mets of vitality for years to come, especially if Jerred Kelenic becomes a special player through the 2040s.
No need for Mets’ fans to wonder how this feels. After all, the Mets traded Nolan Ryan (and three prospects) to the then California Angels in December of 1971 for the almost finished Jim Fregosi. The Mets’ faithful had to watch Ryan excel for another 23 years while Fregosi was done faster than a New York minute.
The moment the Cano/Diaz trade was announced, it was clear that Chaim Bloom, the man the Wilpon’s should have chosen as their next General Manager, would never have agreed to such a colossal waste of resources. The Rays do not trade first-round picks until they’re certain the pick will not pan out.
See Tim Beckham, who was drafted first overall by Tampa Bay in 2008, was only traded after he failed at the major league level over three separate seasons. He was traded to the Baltimore Orioles at the trade deadline in 2017 for a young 21-year-old, right-handed pitcher, Tobias Myers, currently pitching in the Single A+ Florida League.
The thought that Bloom would have moved two key young assets for an aging player costing more than $120 million over the next five years, and a closer, would be, and is, ludicrous. Okay, Brodie Van Wagenen added other assets in to lessen the onerous cost to the Mets, but that did not make it a good trade. It’ll only become a better trade if Van Wagenen can deal Diaz at the trade deadline to a team desperate for a closer, for a boatload of talent. Then the Mets must hope that the talent they receive back will equal Kelenic and Justin Dunn, the young pitcher the Mets drafted in the first round (19th overall) of the 2016 draft.
Bloom, along with Tampa Bay VP of Baseball Operations Erik Neander, collect talent, they don’t squander it. Had they been in charge of the Mets, Jerred Kelenic and Justin Dunn would still be Mets. Cano would remain the Mariners’ problem.
Bloom more than likely would have put the Mets in the business of finding great young talent and then acquiring those players for assets the Mets were willing to move. Assets like Steven Matz (if there is even demand for him given he has yet to prove much at the major league level).
Bloom undoubtedly would have changed the Mets identity from the team being swindled, to the team committing the daylight robbery. And while robbery is not a personal favorite, seeing my favorite baseball team fatten up at the expense of another would help me sleep easier.
The other bad guy in this story is Jerry DiPoto, GM of Seattle, who once pitched for the Mets. He took Brodie Van Wagenen to school. Why Van Wagenen signed off on this blunder was worse than unthinkable.
At least Mickey Calloway was not Van Wagenen’s choice as manager. Yet as much of an impediment as Calloway may be as he blunders through another season, he is not the reason the Mets are yet again a dismal team. He is not the reason Todd Frazier is invisible at third base, or none of the outfielders can hit, or Wilson Ramos has produced little behind the plate, or that Amed Rosario should be back in Tripl-A or packaged with a pitcher, like Matz, for another asset.
Or hapless Dominic Smith. The Mets seem bent on systematically destroying his trade value. Message to Van Wagenen: Play Smith. The moment he starts to hit, trade him, or package him to the Yankees. See below.
The Mets are wretched because they can’t seem to find and keep talented players. Consider Justin Turner. The Mets picked him up after Baltimore released him. Turner was an effective utility man for the Mets over four seasons (2010-2013) before they released him. A few months later, the Los Angeles Dodgers signed him to a minor-league contract and the rest is history. Unfortunately for the Mets, they are on the wrong side of too many of these stories.
The Mets haven’t swiped a great player since they stole David Cone from Kansas City for catcher Ed Hearn in the late ’80s. A decade before, Kansas City had stolen Amos Otis from them in the Joe Foy deal. Otis went on to become an important member of those great Royals teams of the late ’70s. While the Mets dilly-dallied from one hapless season of futility to another.
Perhaps someone in the Mets’ front office should diagram the essentials of a baseball trade for Van Wagenen and remind him the idea is not to trade diamonds for cubic zirconia. How about moving Dominic Smith to the Yankees with Steven Matz for … the Yankees have young assets the Mets could use. Thairo Estrada has shown more in the last week than anyone on the Mets infield so far this season. Broaden the trade to include Noah Syndergaard and perhaps the Yankees would move Miguel Andujar, Estrada and Jordan Montgomery. Or Luis Cessa, originally a Met selection years ago. There’s a fit between these teams now.
This is why the Mets desperately still need a renaissance man in their front office. Someone who understands that Robinson Cano was washed up when Seattle packaged him with Edwin Diaz. Someone who recognized there was a reason why Seattle proposed the deal in the first place. And while the deal made a lot of sense for them, it made no sense for the Mets. Why did Brodie Van Wagenen want either player?
In case anyone has forgotten, though the Mets pretend to be a small-market team, they’re actually a large-market team. They’re second fiddle in New York City, but it’s New York City, not Tampa Bay.
A big problem is the Mets are still led by the narrow-minded Wilpon family. They are not baseball men, and have lacked a cohesive baseball philosophy for years, scrambling between different GMs every few years, as they switched philosophical gears on players and player development in a never-ending quest to win on a shoestring. It worked for five minutes in 2015 and then fell apart again in 2016. Brodie Van Wagenen is the latest in a long line of questionable decisions.
In contrast, one of the reasons the Yankees continue to succeed, year after year, especially this year in the face of a rash of injuries, are the sharp baseball men who choose which players to draft, which players to sign as major league and minor league free agents, and which players to pursue in trades. This why the Yankees rarely experience a hapless season of futility.
Of the players who have spent time on the Yankees’ 25-man roster this season, 11 arrived via trade. Luis Cessa, Clint Frazier, Domingo German, Chad Green, Tommy Kahnle, Giancarlo Stanton, Mike Tauchman, Gleyber Torres, Gio Urshela and Luke Voit. Most recently, Cameron Maybin was added because of injuries to their outfielders.
Add in drafted players like Brett Gardner, Thairo Estrada, Tyler Wade, Gary Sanchez, Miguel Andujar and Aaron Judge, among others, and it’s easy to see a formidable lineup with depth on the bench. Didi Gregorious and Aaron Hicks have yet to be mentioned because they have been on the IL all season.
There is nothing like this aggregate of talent on the Mets, despite the fact their frontline starters are excellent. No wonder finding the right direction to .500 is so difficult. Of course, why the Mets cannot seem to stockpile talent is an unanswered question. Perhaps rather than lie to themselves, the Mets should face the truth. They are not very good. They have not been good since 2015. That was the second or third good year this decade. There’s no reason to assume there won’t be a lot more hapless seasons of futility ahead.
Meanwhile, Robinson Cano is already an albatross around the Mets’ neck (see this year’s expensive version of Albert Pujols on the Angels’ roster for further clarification of the word albatross. Last year’s performance also qualifies). Edwin Diaz will be several years older. And Jerred Kelenic will be tearing the cover off the ball at T-Mobile Park in Seattle as the Mets look back and, once again, wonder what the hell they were thinking. Perhaps they’ll even wonder why they hired Brodie Van Wagenen.
They should.
