Let’s start by catching up on Pop Quiz questions:
1. From Gary Mintz of South Huntington: In a 1968 episode of “Family Affair,” Jody shows off an autographed baseball to his friend Timmy. What superstar player, now a Hall of Famer, has signed the ball?
2. From Mike Gillingham of Port Washington: In a 1995 episode of “Seinfeld,” George Costanza runs over a famous actress (who is catching) in a home-plate collision. Name the actress.
I saw my friend Tyler Kepner of the New York Times at last night’s Mets game, and one paragraph from his typically stellar column this morning stood out in particular:
“The plan might work, in time. But the Mets have already had time to get this right. Only one team, the Houston Astros, has a current streak of losing seasons that matches the Mets’ five. And the Astros, who entered Wednesday’s games with the same number of victories as the Mets, are showing strong signs of life.”
As we sit on Thursday, the Astros (30-37) are percentage points ahead of the Mets (29-36). From Opening Day 2009 through the present, the Astros are 342-535, a .390 winning percentage. In the same time period, the Mets are 403-472 (.461). Few would dispute the Astros possess a deeper base of young talent than do the Mets, with rookies Jon Singleton and George Springer joining the club this year and many more coming.
You know why the Astros’ future seems brighter than the Mets’? In my opinion, it’s because the Astros committed to an epic rebuild, while the Mets tried to sort of have it both ways, even as they slashed their payroll at an unconscionable rate.
Earlier this season, I was chatting with a talent evaluator from an American League team, and I asked him if he was as high on the Mets’ organizational pitching as everyone else seemed to be. Yes, the official said, he was.
But then he volunteered: “What I don’t get about the Mets is why they didn’t sell high on guys like Daniel Murphy and Lucas Duda.”
You could reasonably throw Dillon Gee, Jon Niese and Bobby Parnell into that conversation, and Ike Davis, too, back when he was a prized Mets piece rather than the human roller coaster he became.
Ironically, this is an instance in which you can fault Mets ownership for not being cheap enough. In neglecting to look at a bigger picture. And really, I’m not even sure how much we should fault them.
The Wilpons and Saul Katz consistently have attempted to put a somewhat presentable product on the field, one that would at least create the illusion of respectability. They hoped general manager Sandy Alderson would prove capable of finding bargain-bin surprises, and Alderson has discovered some but nowhere near enough, while some of his bigger major-league risks — most notably Frank Francisco and Chris Young — have flopped.
But what if the Mets resolved to move anything with even a modicum of value, the way the Astros have since Jeff Luhnow took over as general manager in December 2011? Just as important, by posting horrible big-league results, the Astros have drafted very high; last week, they became the first team ever to select first overall in three straight years.
Alderson’s greatest strength in his Mets reign arguably has been as a seller. We can clearly see the promise of Zack Wheeler, who came from San Francisco in the 2011 trade for Carlos Beltran. It’s way too soon to write off either Travis d’Arnaud or Noah Syndergaard, the primary pieces in the 2012 R.A. Dickey trade with Toronto. And even last year’s shipment of Marlon Byrd to Pittsburgh brought back bullpen piece Vic Black and promising minor league infielder Dilson Herrera.
How much greater would the Mets’ talent pool be now had they connected on more such deals?
Now, here’s the caveat: This same official who wondered about the Mets’ thinking? I told him essentially what I just wrote in the above few paragraphs. I added that I thought both the Mets and the Yankees underestimated the intellect of their fan bases, that New York teams could get away with a full-blown rebuild if they explained it sincerely to their customer base.
The Yankees could cite how the drafting of the Core Four resulted from bad times — you have to be bad to draft sixth, as was the case in 1992 when the Yankees popped Derek Jeter — and the Mets could harken back to 1986, when Darryl Strawberry (first overall in 1980) and Dwight Gooden (fifth overall in 1982) came from Joe Torre’s Mets voyage.
The official pondered that for about four seconds and responded, “I’m not sure if that would work in New York.”
How many fair-weather fans, the official asked — how many blue-collar types looking to entertain their clients for a night — would pay top dollar to watch a team destined to be terrible? How many people would watch the teams’ regional sports networks, knowing that the product was designed in the short term to be bad?
Look, the Yankees finished 85-77 last year, displaying impressive perseverance in the face of myriad injuries. The greatest closer ever retired with a flourish, a beloved starting pitcher put up a representative season in what turned out to be his last year, the fan-friendly Alfonso Soriano went on a power tear and the lightning rod Alex Rodriguez showed up and got people worked up for nearly two months.
And the team’s attendance and TV ratings plummeted. The Yankees were so terrified of missing the playoffs again in 2014, they blew off their plans to get their payroll under the $189 million luxury-tax threshold and instead doubled down on their long-term contract love with huge deals for Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Masahiro Tanaka plus a sizable commitment to the aging Carlos Beltran.
The Mets’ equivalent of that was re-upping with captain and face of the franchise David Wright. And holding onto Murphy, Niese (who signed an extension in 2012), Duda and the now-injured Parnell.
Maybe the Mets can achieve their goals by bypassing the 95- and 100-loss seasons. Maybe they can use their pitching depth to acquire a bat, and perhaps ownership will sign onto getting the payroll back into nine figures. Although at this point, we’ll believe it only when we see it.
Time will tell, but it’s worth noting this: Even while trying to make these past few years semi-interesting, the Mets’ owners have created an immense trust deficit with their fan base, largely due to the payroll slashing. Their attendance has fallen precipitously. How much worse could things possibly be if they had just done the full-blown rebuild?
Your Pop Quiz answers:
1. Willie Mays
2. Bette Midler
If you have a tidbit that correlates baseball to popular culture, please send it to me at [email protected].