Mets at the Winter Meetings

Tomorrow is the start of baseball's winter meetings.  This is usually when a lot of major moves and free agent signings start to come to fruition.

Last week, we saw two big free agents come off the board as Zach Greinke and David Price signed with new teams.  Greinke signed with the Diamondbacks and Price with the Red Sox.  Each pitcher got north of $30 million dollars per year, setting the bar high.  So all remaining starting pitchers on the market should have a smile on their face and dollar signs in their eyes.

Starting pitching, is one area where the Mets do not need any help.  Every team needs depth, so hopefully the Mets can keep Bartolo Colon to be a reliever/spot starter.  And they do have Zack Wheeler coming back sometime mid season.  Barring injury, the Met rotation is set with their young guns.

The Mets have several needs : both middle infield positions, an outfielder who can play all three outfield positions, bullpen, and bench.

After the season ended the big question was do they re-sign Daniel Murphy.  Right now, it is looking like the answer is no.  Murphy had a wonderful playoff run, despite cooling off in the World Series.
But according to all reports, the Mets are all in on Ben Zobrist.  Zobrist can play more positions than Murphy and can play them better defensively as well.  He can serve as a second baseman/insurance policy at third base in case David Wright gets hurt, and he can play the outfield.  Offensively, I feel Murphy and Zobrist are very similar with Zobrist getting the edge in on base percentage.

My personal choice would be to bring Murphy back.  He definitely does not solve the defensive issues up the middle that this team has but I think it's worth it bringing a long tenured Met back.
I don't think this will happen.  If the Mets get Zobrist, he will likely get  a 4 year deal and that is why I would rather have Murphy because he is younger.  Zobrist will be 35 this year and as we all know in recent years, baseball is not kind to older guys at the end of multi year contracts.
But more than likely, we will see Zobrist play mostly second base and some other positions, and some combination of Wilmer Flores, Ruben Tejada, and Dilson Herrera in the middle infield.

The other Met glaring hole will be the void left by free agent Yoenis Cespedes.  Despite his struggles in the postseason, no one can discount what he did for the Mets down the stretch.  And despite the cons of bringing him back, he is probably the best fit for the Mets because he can play center field and he possesses middle of the lineup power that is very hard to come by in today's game.  But the Mets will probably let him walk.  They do not want to get burned by giving this guy a lot of money or giving him a long term deal, and I don't blame them.  They do need to save some money to pay their pitchers in a few years.  But if I were the Mets, I would consider bringing Cespedes back if the market for him comes down.

One thing I hope the Mets don't cheap out on is the bench.  I would love to bring back both Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe.  Bottom line, a good team that wants to contend, needs a strong Major League bench.  We saw last year, when players got injured early in the season, the Mets did not have Major League talent on the bench and it showed.  So if the Mets want to contend and capitilize on having a strong pitching staff, they need to have solid reinforcements on the roster.

I won't get too into the bullpen.  I like having Addison Reed back.  Familia is a stud closer.  Relievers are very much "lightning in bottle" type players so I hope they can go to Spring Training with enough guys to find the right combination of pitchers in the pen.

We will see what happens this week and in this offseason.  I don't expect a big splash from the Mets unless they do sign Ben Zobrist.  I think the front office will do similar to what they did last year.
Try to win with what they have and win behind their starting rotation, then try to improve mid-season via trade to make another run at the postseason.
But if they really want to contend again, they need to improve because other teams will be better.  It is so hard to win year in and year out as we all know...