In the wake of the Mets trading for Carlos Delgado and signing Billy Wagner (let's dwell on that sentence fragment before moving on…ahhh…), I've heard the Mets referred to as a team built to win now. Where I'm from, winning now beats winning later.
Now is sooner. One's sense of what will happen sooner is generally more accurate than one's sense of what will happen thereafter. The sooner something happens, the more gratifying something is, or at least it means we are more quickly assured of the resulting gratification if indeed gratification results. Get me close to winning in 2006 and I don't have to wait for a year to be named later.
But to my continuing amazement, I've learned some people, both those on our side and those who viciously rub their hands together as they await our demise and destruction, think “win now” is Stern [1] stuff, that they are two of the Seven Dirty Words [2] and that they require the washing out of the mouth with high-quality, natural, handmade Manor Hall Soap [3].
“The Mets are a 'win now' team,” the voices gravely intone as if it's very, very bad news, as if ambition can only beget failure, particularly in this part of the world and in this part of town. Please Mets, I can hear between the lines, go back to striving for mediocrity so we can criticize you for that.
Why so glum, chums? The bitter possibility of imminent success getcha down? You work for the NYC Sanitation Department and dread cleaning up all that orange and blue ticker-tape? Series tickets gonna eat into your Prozac budget?
Oh, poor you [4].
I'm not suggesting that the third world championship in New York Mets history is a sure thing for 2006. But it's surely a better thing to be making immediate strides toward that goal than not. If your best way of getting there is to take the team you had in 2005 and send them out there to build on what was just constructed, do that. If the most certain route to success is to replenish the bulk of your existing roster with in-house talent and take your best shot at '06 but understand that everything is on track to truly gel in '07 and beyond, do that.
But if you're already dealing with a fairly veteran team with a finite shelf life for certain of its key assets and you have reason to doubt the efficacy of your replenishments, then do this:
Trade for Carlos Delgado. Sign Billy Wagner. Rinse, repeat for a catcher and a second baseman and a lefty reliever of some ability.
Are the Mets a “win now” team? Gosh, I hope so. They haven't won yet so I'm getting a little antsy. Might there be heck to pay if this doesn't work and the man who owns the team we root for takes a chunk of the money we give him and has to write checks to guys who didn't win now and won't win later? Absolutely. Life runs rampant with risk.
There's also the risk that things will go the way they're supposed to, that a Delgado will slug his well-spoken head off and that a Wagner will zip gas past his former teammates and other bad dudes who did in the last closer, a gent we will refer to, in honor of Mrs. W's favorite show, as the Phantom of the Bullpen [5]. There's every indication that both players — both MET players, that is — are capable of effecting these actions in the coming season. Knock wood, the next season, too. If we're alive and well as people as well as fans in 2008, well, let's hope for the best.
I know, the pristine ideal is to be 99 and 44/100% pure, that the only team worth getting in a dreamy lather over is nine men up from Norfolk magically coalescing in Flushing. If that's your soapbox subject, I join you in wishing that happens someday. But if the Mets hadn't traded for Delgado and signed Wagner, it wouldn't have happened in 2006 or 2007.
We've got Reyes. We've got Wright. That's two out of eight position players who were jewels of the system. That's not so bad if you realize that the Mets farm has produced more alpacas than it has studs this past decade.
Quick, who was the last homegrown non-pitcher to be cast off by us only to come back and make us cry? My guess is Preston Wilson, and he went for Piazza, so save your tears. Jason Bay doesn't count since he was not homegrown, just badly undervalued and mishandled. I could be missing someone, but who's out there with a bat, a glove and a Met pedigree?
Justin Huber? Jason Phillips? Vance Wilson? Ty Wigginton? Is Alex Escobar still rehabbing somewhere?
If you hadn't noticed, the Mets have produced almost no position players of distinction since Hundley and Alfonzo and maybe Payton — save, hallelujah!, for the incumbent shortstop and third baseman. That's a drought. That's the reason the Mets fired their head of scouting and are reorganizing their minor league infrastructure. Reyes and Wright are aberrations. Everybody else is a crapshoot.
So the options are hang on to the Mike Jacobses until they flourish or they don't (track record indicating they won't) or go about building a winner, even if the building is, heaven forefend, accelerated. Trade for Delgado. Sign Wagner. Pick one of those catchers. Check out Grudzielanek for a year or two. And start drafting and developing a lot better than has been the case since Buddy Harrelson was waiting on his final growth spurt.
In the literal meantime, attempt to win now. I won't be offended. I promise.
Carlos Delgado and I have one thing in common, and it ain't income. What it is is at Gotham Baseball [6].