Leaving Tuesday night's loss to the Phillies, I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. It seemed certain that the Mets would not win again all season, and that the bullpen woes in that game would lead Omar Minaya to go out and make a bunch of short-sighted trades to assure that the Mets would never win again ever.
Yet the Mets play baseball, and that's not the way it goes in baseball. In baseball, a team that can look like a complete and utter failure one night can go out and look like division champions the next two days. That's exactly what the Mets did. By winning on Wednesday and Thursday, the Mets took the sting out of that Tuesday debacle. In the end, the only major negative you can take from the one loss in the series is this:
Marlon Anderson started in left field.
Listen: I like Anderson. He seems like a genuinely good guy in a sport and a society with too few of them. He is, by all accounts, great for the Mets' clubhouse and has been known to rouse his teammates with the type of pep talk that will someday be immortalized if the Mets win in spectacular fashion this season and somebody decides to make a movie about it. And that's fantastic. Really.
But Marlon Anderson is not now, nor has he ever been, a capable Major League left fielder. In 118 at-bats this season, Anderson has posted a .203 batting average with a miserable .244 on-base percentage and no power. It looks like he can't even handle left field defensively, but that's immaterial. Left field is not a defensive position, it's an offensive position. And in a three-game set against the Phillies, the Mets filled that position twice with Marlon Anderson and once with overmatched youngster Nick Evans. Not good.
Granted, the Mets won two of those three games, so it's hard to complain. Plus the team has made no secret about hunting for corner outfield help on the trade market. Ryan Church is still injured, and Moises Alou (shock of shocks) and Angel Pagan are likely done for the year. All true. It hasn't been an easy run for Mets corner outfielders. Still, you've got to be able to put someone better than Marlon Anderson out there.
Jerry Manuel has said that he'd been starting Anderson lately in an attempt to get his left-handed bat going. That's all well and good, but I'm thinking -- hoping -- that perhaps this span of increased playing time for Anderson was the veteran's last chance to prove he's worth a roster spot. After all, if the Mets must make a roster move, they'll have to part with someone. Evans will likely depart when Church returns, and they have some flexibility because they're currently carrying three catchers. But Anderson, a career second baseman who can no longer play the middle infield, has become something of an albatross. Everyone loves a veteran leader, but I wonder if there's any relationship between influence and batting average. Who's getting fired up by the guy hitting .208?
The trade deadline is approaching rapidly, and there'll be no shortage of talk on whom the Mets should and shouldn't get in this column. One thing, though:
Everyone keeps saying that no one wants Adam Dunn.
Perfect. If the market for Dunn is really plummeting, that's exactly why the Mets should pursue him. Even the most basic economics textbook will tell you to buy low. It's not the Mets' style, I realize, but it's the way to construct a good team. Take a look at the Tampa Bay Rays. They picked up Carlos Pena and Eric Hinske, not to mention valuable bullpen cogs Dan Wheeler and Grant Balfour, at the nadir of their value. How's that working out for them?
There are knocks on Dunn, some merited. He doesn't hit for a high batting average and he strikes out a ton. That's true, but Blue Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi's recent claims that Dunn doesn't like playing baseball seem absurd to me, if not slanderous. Dunn played in at least 160 games in 2004, 2005 and 2006 then played in 152 in 2007. If he doesn't like baseball, why is he torturing himself by playing so frequently?
(Also, and not for nothing: J.P. Ricciardi is one of the worst GMs in baseball. If he knew more about what motivates a baseball player or what makes a player good, the Blue Jays would be a much better team.)
The upside to Dunn is that he's the model of three-true-outcomes consistency. Maybe he's not the elite player some thought he'd be when he stormed onto the scene as a 21-year-old in 2001, but every year he posts an OBP around .390 with about 40 home runs. That's excellent, even in a hitter's park. Is he the best outfielder in the world? Not by a long shot. But if he's cheap, he's a huge upgrade over everyone the Mets have trotted out to left this season.
Honestly, I have no idea what it would take to get Dunn from the Reds and I'm not sure the Mets have any interest. Cincinnati could hold on to Dunn -- who will be a free agent after the season -- if they feel the two compensatory draft picks he'll net them are better than any trade package. But if the Mets only have to part with something slightly more valuable than two draft picks, well, they should pull the trigger. It won't be the most popular move in the world, and I don't know that New York will take to Dunn. Mets fans would instead just wonder why all of a sudden the team started scoring so many more runs.
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