Panic Time

The esteemed Dykstra04 did an excellent job of presenting the glass-half-full scenario in regards to your 2008 New York Mets. I don't see it that way. In fact, it's my job to present the dreaded glass half empty. In fact, as I see it, there really isn't a whole lot of liquid there at all.

Mainly, I'm concerned about the general age of the team. The Mets, you see, are old. Last year their batters had an aggregate age of 30.8, the third oldest in the National League. The two older teams were the Astros, who are probably the worst organization in baseball right now top-to-bottom, with absolutely zero talent in the minors, and the Giants, whose age has been a running joke for the entirety of Brian Sabean's tenure as GM. Every NL East team was over a year younger on the offensive side of the ledger than the Mets. And the pitching doesn't look any rosier--Mets hurlers were second-oldest in the NL, younger than only San Diego.

Old players, of course, keep getting worse, and they break down and get hurt. The Mets, thanks to the laws of physics, or something like that, will be a year older next season. And they haven't done anything to address their alarming lack of youth. Instead, they've perpetuated it. To wit:

--Re-signing their 31-year-old, light-hitting, physically-deteriorating second-baseman to a FOUR YEAR contract. Luis Castillo's knees are basically shot after a year-and-a-half of playing on the artificial turf at Minnesota, and his base-stealing abilities, once prolific, are now in decline. He did a nice job with the Mets, putting up a .371 OBP after they traded for him, but the team would be extremely lucky if he replicated that figure next season, let alone over the next four years.

--Re-signed soon-to-be 41-year-old Moises Alou to a one-year extension. This was a good move, because Alou knocks the cover off the ball whenever he can hobble to the plate. Still, you can pencil him in for only about 80 games next year, and who do the Mets turn to when he goes down? I love Endy Chavez as much as the next guy, and his heroics in Game Seven two years ago will never be forgotten, but when he's playing everyday in a corner, your team has problems. What about Carlos Gomez, you say? Love the guy's potential, but I seriously doubt he's ready to provide serious production next year.

--Traded perhaps the team's best young talent, 22-year-old Lastings Milledge, for a 30-year-old catcher who can't hit and a 28-year-old outfielder. (This trade was discussed in an earlier post.) Ryan Church hasn't been the healthiest of players, and again, what do you do if he breaks down? There's a good chance that at some point next season both Alou and Church will be on the bench because of various ailments, and if you're a Mets fan, are you really comfortable with Endy Chavez and Carlos Gomez patrolling the corners?

So the Mets significant moves so far have made the team older and more injury-prone. And we haven't even gotten to the situation with Carlos Delgado. He'll be 36 next year, and players with his profile--big, slow, not agile, horrific defenders--have a history of aging extremely poorly. The kind of abilities that Delgado exhibits are in fact, in sabermetric circles, known as "old player skills." Here's a concerning statistic: from 2005, when he had a fantastic season with the Marlins, to 2006, when he put up solid-but-not-great numbers at Shea, a ballpark easier to hit in than Miami's Pro Player, Delgado's OPS+ fell from 161 to 131, a 30 point drop. From 2006 to 2007, his OPS+ fell down to 103, a 28 point drop. (Thanks to Baseball Reference for the numbers.) Delgado is entering the final year of his contract, which should provide him with motivation to put up good counting stats in order to hit one more payday--the effect of the walk year has been found, sadly, to be very real--that motivation will not be enough to counteract the grim fact that the future Hall of Famer is solidly in his decline phase. While he might have a slightly better year in 2008 than in 2007, I also wouldn't be surprised to see him go the other direction.

And now, the pitching staff. Ah, yes... The word here, I believe, is "paper thin." Well, that's two words, but you understand my point. Yes, Pedro Martinez, Oliver Perez, John Maine, and Orlando Hernandez are a very solid one-through-four in the National League (which has become a secondary satellite to the gaseous giant that is the AL), but what is there beyond that? Two pitchers in Mike Pelfrey and Philip Humber who have failed miserably to live up to outsized expectations? As a Mets fan, I'm not expecting much from that pair. And beyond them, there is virtually nothing in-house. The Mets system is barren, very barren, but at least on the offensive ledger you can look forward to players like Fernando Martinez, who could be an impact bat, and "Faster than Reyes" Gomez, among others. In terms of arms, the New York NL franchise is about as far as you can get from its American League counterpart, which boasts perhaps the best collection of young arms in the game. When Pedro gets hurt, and when El Duque joins him on the shelf--both events are virtually guaranteed to happen--who, I ask into the great void of this blog, who will step into those spots in the rotation? I hear only an echo.

A dismal picture, I know, but its time to wake up to the reality if you're a Mets fan: this team, as currently constituted, will need several gigantic heapings of luck to come close to re-capturing the NL East next year. Omar, the grace period from the 2006 run is most definitely over.