N.Y. Mets: Meet The Magicians

From the desk of:  HEAD BUTTING MR. MET

The New York Mets acquire pitcher Marcus Stroman (and cash) from the Toronto Blue Jays.  Toronto receives from the Mets pitching prospects Anthony Kay and Simeon Woods Richardson.

Stroman is 28-years old and comes with one more season of organizational control.  He owns a career 3.76 ERA and 1.278 WHiP, with a 9.0 H/9 and 7.2 K/9 average through 789 career innings pitched.  This season he is 6-11 with a fine 2.96 ERA through 21 games.  He throws a full repertoire of pitches: fastball; slider; cutter; curveball; and change-up.  This season he is throwing his cutter and curveball at the expense of his fastball far more often than in his four previous seasons according to Fangraphs.  Is the strategy working?  This season he is inducing ground balls at a rate of 56% to date.  Over his last four seasons he averaged a 62.1% rate of ground balls.

Make of it what you will, because I don't care.

In lieu of acquiring a legit positional slugger, I'd be perfectly content with this acquisition if it winds up being their only transaction.  Stroman is a fine addition; key word being addition.  And there's the rub.  I fear acquiring Stroman is merely a prelude to disaster.  I'm not averse to trading Noah Syndergaard, Edwin Diaz, or anyone else for that matter.  I personally love blowing teams up and starting from scratch.  But that requires a competent front office and a well thought out plan.  Brodie Van Wagenen is not yet a full year on the job, we're only four months into the season, and the organization is in a complete panic.  His incoming bravado; dynamic off-season transactions; the bold new narrative; all of it; a complete fail.

The Wilpons say fans won't support a rebuild (meanwhile New York City teams are rebuilding all around them).  They're also verified unwise and broke.  Although, I'll play along and agree that a full rebuild is not necessary at the present time.  That being said there's only so much Brodie can do in the absence of hard cold cash.  But this is the condition he agreed to when he took the job.  What's a new general manager tasked with quickly resuscitating a losing organization to do?  He essentially wipes out the minor league system in an ill conceived attempt at immediate contention.  That didn't work.  Thus here we are two days shy of the trade deadline with the Mets scrambling to implement another hastily contrived plan.  Hence this latest death defying high wire plan of emptying the farm's last vestiges of talent in order to acquire Syndergaard's replacement, whom they are reportedly hoping to trade for sake of replenishing said farm system and(!?) adding major league solutions to their myriad of positional problems while still striving towards post-season contention in time for 2020 ... all at the same time ... is complete folly!  In this latest scenario we find ourselves tripping back over the old narrative.  Like father, like son, the overwhelming problem is Fred and Jeff are too blind to see the err of their ways.

Meet the Magicians ...

On the bright side Brodie Van Wagenen has somehow cornered the market on available starting pitchers (Stroman, Syndergaard, and Zack Wheeler).  But the likelihood he recoups talent representative of what he's given away are at best speculatively low.  Here's to hoping Brodie has another trick up his sleeve.  It just better not be handkerchiefs or a pigeon.

Oh, and I see they just traded Jason Vargas.

To be continued ...