Tuesday night, the Mets signed free agent relievers Frank Francisco (2 yrs/$12 million) and Jon Rauch (1 year/$3.5 million) and traded Angel Pagan to the San Francisco Giants for RHP Ramon Ramirez and CF Andres Torres.
Sure, the Mets bullpen looks better this morning than it did yesterday. Of course, Terry Collins is happy. His job just got easier. The reinforced bullpen might even help the Mets win an extra game or two in 2012. At Fangraphs, Eno Sarris makes the point that the “Mets revamped a sorry bullpen for a decent price, and they may have even acquired a piece with future trade value,” and did so for just $2 million more than the Phillies will pay Jonathan Papelbon in 2012.
For $12 million, Frank Francisco will be effective, and strike guys out when he’s healthy, which will be significantly less than regularly. He owns a career 9.92 K/9, and has struck out more than a batter an inning every year since 2007. On the down side, the 32-year old has thrown 60 innings in a season just once in his MLB life and hasn’t cleared 53 innings since 2008.
Given that the Mets traded for Ramon Ramirez, who’s really pretty good (more on that later), I’m not sure why they also felt the need to pay the 33-year old Jon Rauch $3.5 million to back up Francisco. Rauch ran a 4.85 ERA a year ago, smack in line with his ordinary peripherals of 7.11 K/9, 2.42 BB/9 and 1.90 HR/9. To be fair, his FIP of 5.26 was his worst of his MLB career since his rookie season in 2002. He’s been a moderately effective middle reliever for a while. If $3.5 million is the going rate for that level of veteran mediocrity, well so be it. I don’t think he’s actually any better than Bobby Parnell (3.64 ERA in 2011/3.21 FIP/9.71 K/9) or Manny Acosta (3.45 ERA/3.81 ERA/8.81 K/9 in 2011). I liked Ted Berg’s suggestion that, “the Mets are planning on re-signing Chris Young and need someone to guard him in pickup basketball games.”
Here’s the dirty (not) secret: none of this matters. This is all just roster-move masturbation. None of the five players mentioned in the opening paragraph – the three relievers or the two centerfielders, will play major roles on the Mets’ next playoff team. At this point, the only player of the group that the Mets have even committed to beyond 2012 is Francisco. This is practice (dry-humping if you will) for when the Mets will need to build their next bullpen as a contender.
The key decision point for the Mets this off-season was declining, for budgetary reasons, to offer Jose Reyes a competitive contract; allowing him to walk. I have already defended that choice. Given what we know about the Mets’ budget for 2012 and 2013, I still think it was right. After that, little else matters now.
Ted laid out a piece of the optimistic case for 2013 yesterday, but it’s really still all about 2014. None of Tuesday night’s moves change that. None of the players acquired Tuesday matter for 2014 unless they return something valuable in a subsequent trade.
Sandy Alderson has steadfastly refused to use the word rebuilding to describe what the Mets are doing. That’s fine. I’ll write it instead. The Mets are rebuilding. This is part and parcel of the process. Everything is geared to avoid constraining the options for the 2014 roster.
