Author: Drew Costello
Matt Cerrone from Metsblog.com wrote in his blog that "the Mets are not in a good position to sell" at the deadline. This was an interesting point that I hadn't thought of. The Mets stand today 9 games behind Philadelphia for first place and seem to lose more ground in the standings everyday. However, who do they have that other teams would want?
The most likely candidates would be Gary Sheffield (currently injured), Pedro Feliciano, and maybe a player like Alex Cora (everyone wants to pick up someone with his type of leadership). If you look at these three players, none of them would bring back anything of value to the Mets. Omar Minaya might be able to pluck an average low minor league player for one of these players, but that won't help the Mets for the future.
It seems as if the best course of action is to keep going the way we're going and not make any moves. When the Mets were winning the division in 2006, Theo Epstein had a similar call to make towards the trading deadline. The Red Sox were struggling and were not going to make the playoffs. Instead of trading prospects for a lost season, he held on to them. Meanwhile, players like Jacoby Elsbury and Dustin Pedroia were lighting up the minor leagues similar to what Wilmer Flores and Brad Holt are doing right now. As we know, Elsbury has become a solid lead off hitter for the Red Sox and Pedroia won the MVP last season.
The biggest problem with this current group is that the solutions that we've been sold on haven't worked. The reason for this is that the minor leagues are thin at the AAA level. However, players like Ike Davis, Reese Havens, Brad Holt, Jeremy Mejia and Wilmer Flores have all had some sort of success at the AA level. A year from now, some of those players will be in AAA and ready in case of an injury, as long as we leave them alone and stay the course. This is the smartest thing Omar Minaya can do and I really hope he has the patience to not pull the trigger on a move that could hurt the team's future.
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