It's Hard to Say Maybe
The Mets are finally good enough that it might be better for them not to make a move.
The Mets will gather for their first workout of Spring Training 2021 on February 18th. One month from today, in other words, despite the fact that it seems like it’s still March 2020 and I’m looking forward to the livestreamed St. Patrick’s Day Dropkick Murphy’s concert. Pitchers and Catchers report on February 17th; a month from now, minus a day.
It’s not quite baseball season yet, of course; that comes the moment the Super Bowl ends. It’s always strangely amusing to observe Mets fans on Twitter the day of the Super Bowl. They’ll spend the day mocking those who celebrate the annual end of the Super Bowl by posting that it’s now officially baseball season, and then the second the game ends — this year, when Tom Brady evades a George Blanda blitz and fires a touchdown pass to George Washington, or something like that — they’ll get so caught up in the euphoria that they’ll start posting pictures of sunrise in Port St. Lucie, and it’s such a happy occasion that no one ever seems to mind.
But baseball season is coming, and there’s only so much time left for free agents to find new teams. Of the remaining notable names, the Mets seem to be in the running for two: George Springer, of course, and Brad Hand.
The cases for Hand is fairly obvious: the Mets could use a left-handed reliever. Right now, the Mets’ left-handed relievers are Steven Matz, who might need to join the rotation and might not prove reliable either way, and Daniel Zamora, who has pitched all of 17.2 career major league innings. Brad Hand has a 2.70 E.R.A. over the last five seasons, and in his career has held lefties to a .552 OPS.
Hand makes almost too much sense for the Mets not to sign. Adding a shutdown left-handed reliever to the bullpen will be like filling a hole in a wall with one last brick. The problem is small, and the wall is almost complete, but the difference between a wall with a small hole and a wall without one is far more than a single solitary brick. Teams become great by eliminating weaknesses. If the Mets sign Brad Hand, their lefthanded relief will instantly go from a weakness to a strength. It will no longer be a weak link where opponents can climb back into games; instead, it’ll be yet another area in which the Mets have an advantage.
The case for Hand might actually be stronger than the case for Springer. Hand won’t cost the Mets more than a hundred million dollars, the way Springer will. He won’t push potential stars out of position, or to the bench, and he won’t complicate the Mets’ ability to sign their homegrown players to contract extensions. He’s just an excellent reliever who fills a need for the Mets, and it seems overwhelmingly likely that one of these days, Hand and the Mets will agree to a deal.
The case for Springer, obviously, is more complicated. Does he make the Mets better? Yes…probably. In the short term, Springer will be an improvement, but he’ll also push either Dom Smith or Pete Alonso to the bench. He’s 31, so he’s not getting any better and might start getting worse. He’ll command at least $20 million a year, and probably more. Signing Springer will make extensions for Francisco Lindor, Michael Conforto, and Noah Syndergaard far more complicated, although a new Collective Bargaining Agreement will take effect in 2022 and might completely upend the salary rules that govern how teams behave.
Yes, Springer would be an exciting addition. But in the euphoric onset of the Steve Cohen era, it’s worth remembering an old axiom that’s easy to forget: sometimes it’s better not to make a move. Is Springer worth it, if signing him ties up the Mets’ financial flexibility for the next few years and he’ll only be a modest improvement? There’s no one answer, and we won’t find out for a while. If the Mets sign him and he’s excellent, he’s probably worth it. If they don’t, and the outfield turns out to be a liability, then Springer also probably would have been a worthy addition. Maybe. Maybe not.
“Maybe” is a new feeling for Mets fans to get used to, now that the Mets are actually making moves. During the Wilpon era, anything would have been an improvement, but that’s not quite true anymore. This is a good thing: the Mets are finally good enough that we can’t tell whether further moves are worth the cost. It’s no longer obvious. There’s only one thing we really know, which is that one month from today, the Mets will gather in Port St. Lucie for their first workout of the Spring.