Saturday, November 20, 2004
Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes
The Mets will bring back Kris Benson at the price of $22.5 million dollars over the next three years. The deadline deal for Benson basically left the team stuck with him lest they wind up looking even more hapless than usual, so I suppose it's a victory that they managed to get him under contract for a bit less than the $24 million he was allegedly seeking, but that's about where the good news ends, I think.
Kris Benson was drafted first overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1996 and that's still the most impressive thing on his resume. The man turned thirty years old about two weeks ago and his value is still wrapped up almost entirely in potential. He hasn't posted an ERA+ above league average since four years and one elbow surgery ago, and yet the Mets will pay him more than seven million dollars a year largely for nebulous concepts like "stuff". Now, league average is nothing to sneeze at, exactly, but it's hardly anything to pay top dollar for. What Benson's done to earn a couple million dollars more than the equally bland but consistently above-average Steve Trachsel next year eludes me. Benson's walk, strikeout and ERA numbers have been consistenly mediocre since his 2002 return from Tommy John surgery and while 2004 saw slight improvements in those stats as well as his first 200-inning season since 2000, there's hardly anything to get exicted over on his stat sheet. Benson, like Victor Zambrano, is long on hype and short on results, and lacking the success, recent or otherwise, that Trachsel and Tom Glavine can point to. Benson would be a decent guy to have around as part of a supporting cast surrounding a serious ace, but given that the Mets completely lack that sort of pitcher, either in the majors or on the immediate horizon in the minors, Benson's just another guy who's not going to put the team's staff over the top.
Of course, the bigger news in that story is that the Mets are close to bringing back Al Leiter for another year. It's hard to figure what the Mets think they're doing here. Putting together the starting rotation in this way can only signal that they think they can compete in 2005, but I can't really see how they're going to do that with this rotation. If they re-sign Leiter, they'll have five pitchers who are adequate in many ways, but coupled with the team's current bullpen, it should be obvious to anyone that the Mets will not have one of the league's elite pitching staffs in 2005. So that must mean that they're planning to significantly upgrade an offense that ranked twelfth in runs scored in 2004, right? Well, I suppose the rumored deal for Sammy Sosa could be seen as an extremely misguided attempt to do just that, but coupled with the rumored departures of Cliff Floyd and Mike Piazza--still the team's only legitimate major league catcher at thirty-six years old--it's hard to see this team scoring much more than the 684 runs they scored in 2004.
The Benson deal doesn't tell us a whole lot about Omar Minaya's thinking or his plan for the Mets, but bringing back Leiter would begin to paint a more disturbing picture. There's still a long way to go before the start of the season, and if nothing else Minays seems like to be very active between now and then. But his moves to upgrade the offense are going to have to start making a lot more sense than what he's done for the pitching staff if this team is going to turn into either the 2005 contender he thinks they can be or even a good team in the following years. ¶ joe | 1:58 PM |
The Mets will bring back Kris Benson at the price of $22.5 million dollars over the next three years. The deadline deal for Benson basically left the team stuck with him lest they wind up looking even more hapless than usual, so I suppose it's a victory that they managed to get him under contract for a bit less than the $24 million he was allegedly seeking, but that's about where the good news ends, I think.
Kris Benson was drafted first overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1996 and that's still the most impressive thing on his resume. The man turned thirty years old about two weeks ago and his value is still wrapped up almost entirely in potential. He hasn't posted an ERA+ above league average since four years and one elbow surgery ago, and yet the Mets will pay him more than seven million dollars a year largely for nebulous concepts like "stuff". Now, league average is nothing to sneeze at, exactly, but it's hardly anything to pay top dollar for. What Benson's done to earn a couple million dollars more than the equally bland but consistently above-average Steve Trachsel next year eludes me. Benson's walk, strikeout and ERA numbers have been consistenly mediocre since his 2002 return from Tommy John surgery and while 2004 saw slight improvements in those stats as well as his first 200-inning season since 2000, there's hardly anything to get exicted over on his stat sheet. Benson, like Victor Zambrano, is long on hype and short on results, and lacking the success, recent or otherwise, that Trachsel and Tom Glavine can point to. Benson would be a decent guy to have around as part of a supporting cast surrounding a serious ace, but given that the Mets completely lack that sort of pitcher, either in the majors or on the immediate horizon in the minors, Benson's just another guy who's not going to put the team's staff over the top.
Of course, the bigger news in that story is that the Mets are close to bringing back Al Leiter for another year. It's hard to figure what the Mets think they're doing here. Putting together the starting rotation in this way can only signal that they think they can compete in 2005, but I can't really see how they're going to do that with this rotation. If they re-sign Leiter, they'll have five pitchers who are adequate in many ways, but coupled with the team's current bullpen, it should be obvious to anyone that the Mets will not have one of the league's elite pitching staffs in 2005. So that must mean that they're planning to significantly upgrade an offense that ranked twelfth in runs scored in 2004, right? Well, I suppose the rumored deal for Sammy Sosa could be seen as an extremely misguided attempt to do just that, but coupled with the rumored departures of Cliff Floyd and Mike Piazza--still the team's only legitimate major league catcher at thirty-six years old--it's hard to see this team scoring much more than the 684 runs they scored in 2004.
The Benson deal doesn't tell us a whole lot about Omar Minaya's thinking or his plan for the Mets, but bringing back Leiter would begin to paint a more disturbing picture. There's still a long way to go before the start of the season, and if nothing else Minays seems like to be very active between now and then. But his moves to upgrade the offense are going to have to start making a lot more sense than what he's done for the pitching staff if this team is going to turn into either the 2005 contender he thinks they can be or even a good team in the following years. ¶ joe | 1:58 PM |
