The Mets Make a Move

After yesterday, Mets fans should be patient — and overjoyed.

So there I was, feverishly typing and editing away, working on finishing a column before lunch. The theme? Why the Mets — and Mets fans — should embrace big acquisitions and the risk that comes with them, because where’s the excitement if you don’t? I filed, closed my computer, and went to lunch, and came back to find that the Mets had acquired Carlos Carrasco and Francisco Lindor.

As a columnist on the verge of making my debut at Metsmerized, it wasn’t ideal. As a Mets fan, it was. 

So, after adding Lindor and Carrasco, where do the Mets stand? Let’s take a look.

What does the starting lineup look like?

The lineup, for now, probably looks like this:

P

C McCann

1B Alonso/Smith

2B McNeil

SS Lindor

3B Guillorme/Davis

LF Smith/Davis

CF Nimmo

RF Conforto

That’s a good lineup. Especially on offense, that’s a lineup that can go head-to-head with any team in the league. If the Mets add a center fielder, either George Springer or someone else, Nimmo probably shifts to left, and Smith and Alonso split time at first; if the Mets add a third baseman, Guillorme shifts into a utility infield role, with Davis filling in the gaps.

Will the Mets sign any other big names?

Who knows? Springer seems a tad less likely with Lindor joining the club, and reports after the deal was announced yesterday tied the Mets to Jackie Bradley Jr. I must say, I’m not a fan. Bradley Jr. had a solid offensive year in 2020, but he had three bad years before that. He’s an excellent defender, and a good bench option. He’s not a starter for these New York Mets.

As for pitchers, maybe the Mets opt to add another top-tier reliever like Liam Hendriks. The starting rotation is starting to solidify: with deGrom, Carrasco, Stroman, and David Peterson, the Mets have four good options. The fifth will probably be either a free agent like Jake Odorizzi or Masahiro Tanaka, or an internal option, Seth Lugo or Steven Matz. Trevor Bauer? Probably not. And now that Tomoyuki Sugano has returned to Japan, it won’t be him either.

Did I get this one wrong?

Yes! In December, I wrote a column urging the Mets not to trade for Lindor. As I put it, I thought he would cost “approximately two arms, a leg, and the Hope Diamond.” I was wrong. 

This deal was a bargain for the Mets. They sacrificed two shortstops, whose role Lindor fills instantly, and two not-quite-elite prospects. Josh Wolf and Isiah Greene might be great one day, but Carlos Carrasco and Francisco Lindor are both excellent players now. 

Simply put, the return is miles below what I thought it would be. Some of the Lindor trade proposals from earlier in the offseason included Jeff McNeil plus Gimenez plus better prospects. The package the Mets ended up sending to Cleveland comes nowhere close.

“This is highway robbery,” wrote Craig Goldstein, Editor-in-Chief of Baseball Prospectus, on Twitter.

How good is Francisco Lindor?

Really good. He had a down year in 2020, which can happen to anyone over 60 games. He’s an excellent defender: according to Statcast, he’s been worth 36 Outs Above Average since 2017. He’s also, of course, an excellent hitter. He has a career .833 OPS, and hit at least 30 home runs a year from 2017 to 2019. He’s also been good for 20 stolen bases a year. 

Fangraphs projects Lindor to hit 33 home runs in 2021, with an .821 OPS. ZiPS projects 31 home runs, 21 steals, and an .849 OPS. Lindor turned 27 in November, so hopefully he has a lot of career in front of him. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising — but would be very exciting — if the Mets signed him to a long-term contract extension. 

The bottom line is that things are changing in Queens. In the column I wrote yesterday, which will now never see the light of publication, I pitted two hypothetical personalities against each other, the impatient Mets fan against the calm one. “Steve Cohen came in with grand promises that it was finally morning in Queens, but we didn’t get Realmuto, and we don’t have Springer or Bauer, and now we’re not getting Sugano either,” the impatient fan thinks. “Has anything even changed?”

24 hours later, we have our answer. We don’t know what the Mets’ season will look like, where they’ll finish, what luck and misfortune will befall them, or who else will be among them by April. But Francisco Lindor will anchor the 2021 Mets up the middle, and Carlos Carrasco will join the rotation. If that’s the kind of team Steve Cohen is going to run, Mets fans have years of joy ahead of them. Things have most certainly changed.