Somehow, just because life comes at you really, really fast in the world of New York City baseball, Cody Bellinger might turn out to be the player both our teams just have to have the way they just had to have Juan Soto a year ago.
It doesn’t mean Bellinger is as talented a hitter as Soto is. He’s not, even if he is a much better outfielder than Soto is, and even though he’s won one more MVP award – so far – than Soto has. Doesn’t mean that David Stearns, who’s clearly convinced Steve Cohen that he invented baseball, covets Bellinger as much as Brian Cashman does. It just means that Aaron Judge needs the kind of wingman that Soto and Bellinger were for him at Yankee Stadium, and that Soto himself needs that kind of wingman now that Cohen and Stearns have allowed Alonso to walk out the door and head down to Baltimore.
By the way? We hear constantly about how Cohen and Stearns are lifelong Mets fans. Maybe they could start acting that way now that Alonso is gone, and Edwin Diaz is gone, and Brandon Nimmo is gone.
Nimmo got traded. Alonso and Diaz were free agents. The Mets didn’t offer enough for Diaz and didn’t offer anything for Alonso. Maybe Cohen was afraid that if he had to pay Pete Alonso what the Orioles are about to pay him over the next five years the owner of the Mets would have had to get a summer job to make ends meet.
Life really does come at you fast in New York baseball, no doubt. A little over a year ago the Yankees had Soto on their side and were in the World Series and the Mets had just made it to Game 6 of the National League Championship Series in a postseason that got saved by Alonso – against Stearns’ old team, the Brewers – when he hit one of the most famous home runs in the history of the New York Mets in Game 3 of that Mets-Brewers wild card series.
There is absolutely plenty of time, as Stearns and the remaining members of his pep squad keep telling us, for him to go out and buy protection for Soto. It would help Soto mightily, and maybe keep him from getting walked around 200 times next season without Alonso hitting home runs and knocking in runs behind him. But for now, Mets fans will believe that when they see it. Sure, maybe Stearns will end up with Bellinger or Kyle Tucker, who went to the same high school as Pete Alonso, and then go find himself a crackerjack, run-preventing first baseman to take Alonso’s place. If he does, the crowd will cheer. New York is a sucker for comeback stories, even with executives.
But for the moment, Stearns’ approval ratings and Cohen’s approval ratings with their base are comparable to, well, you-know-who’s down there in the nation’s capital. This is happening at a time when Mets fans have a whole lot of questions – and issues – with affordability, too.
Cohen has all the money in the world; has as much money to spend on baseball players as the Guggenheim Partners Dodgers do. But the Mets went in low on Diaz, about whom they had done everything except hire skywriters to identify as their top priority this winter. By the time the Dodgers were in play, it was too late. They had gotten pantsed by the team they most aspire to be by an executive like Andrew Friedman, who showed as soon as he got away from the Tampa Bay Rays that money could indeed by happiness out there in Southern California, just as long as you knew how to spend it.
We keep hearing all this nonsense about how righthanded first basemen like Alonso are practically a threat to national security once they’ve gone past the age of 30. I constantly see Albert Pujols and the free-agent contract he signed with the Angels referenced. Only Pujols got a 10-year contract from the Angels and not the 5-year deal that Alonso just got from the Orioles. Start there.
Then go here: Alonso’s last season with the Orioles will be in his year 35 season. In Pujols’ year 35 season in Anaheim, he hit 40 home runs and knocked in 95. He knocked in more than 100 runs in four of his first six seasons with the Angels, he knocked in 100 runs or more.
So what if Alonso might eventually become a fulltime DH? He’ll be doing that at a time when righthanded power hitters have become more and more of a premium in baseball. He played seven seasons for the Mets and knocked in a total of 712 runs, and that includes a 60-game COVID season. Three times he knocked in 120 runs or more. He hit more than 30 home runs six times, more than 40 twice, more than 50 once. He was a great teammate, he could obviously handle the pressures and responsibilities of New York. And, oh by the way, the most games he ever missed in a season was 10. Only now the head of baseball ops at Citi Field doesn’t think he needs him so much because the Polar Bear is 31 now and isn’t Keith Hernandez at first base.
I also keep hearing that, man oh man, Stearns couldn’t let all of his Mets stars get old together. Got it. Here are the ages of the Dodgers’ starting position players for Game 7 of this World Series, their second in a row and third in six years:
Thirty-one-year old Shohei Ohtani, 30-year old Will Smith, 36-year old Freddie Freeman, 33-year old Mookie Wilson, 35-year old Max Muncy, 33-year old Teoscar Hernandez, 30-year old Tommy Edman, 34-year old Kike Hernandez, 36-year old Miguel Rojas. You can see how worried Dodgers chairman Mark Walter and Friedman and Dave Roberts were about the Dodgers having all grown old together. Imagine how much winning they could do with a younger and cheaper core. Oh, wait.
There is no way of knowing what is going to happen with a new Collective Bargaining Agreement in baseball after next season. Perhaps Stearns is selling Cohen, who sometimes must feel as invested in Stearns as he is in Soto, on a vision of the future in baseball that includes some kind of salary cap.
But for now, all the Mets have done is lose Alonso, lose a reliever with more dazzling stuff than anybody they’ve ever had, lose their baller in leftfield. You’re allowed to say that the Mets never made a World Series with them. Fair enough. Now let’s see Stearns win without them.
Maybe Stearns thinks he can replace Alonso’s production with that of Bellinger, who’s shown he can do it in New York. Or Kyle Tucker, who hasn’t. Maybe Stearns can make skill sets like theirs fit into his baseball model. Just know that the way the Mets finished last season wasn’t Pete Alonso’s fault. Or Edwin Diaz’s. Or Brandon Nimmo. They did their jobs. Stearns didn’t do his. Who chose up these sides, anyway?
***
I started to worry other day during the press conference of Pete Bevacqua, the Notre Dame athletic director, that people attending might slip on his tears when it was over.
Bevacqua at one point actually talked about his football team having gone on one of the greatest 10-game runs in college football history after starting off the season with losses to Miami and Texas A&M.
Wait…..what?
Four of the wins in that streak came against four teams – Arkansas, Boston College, Syracuse, Stanford – that ended up with a combined record of 11-37.
People keep saying Notre Dame isn’t in a conference.
Sure it is:
Its own.
You know who had just as much of a beef as Notre Dame, or even more of one, about not making the tournament?
Vanderbilt.
Here is one of the things their classy coach, Clark Lea, said after the Commodores didn’t get an invitation to the dance:
“We’re no victims.”
Notre Dame’s last national championship was 37 years ago, but they somehow still act as if they’re still winning them the way Nick Saban did at Alabama.
It doesn’t sound as if the University of Michigan’s investigation into their football coach’s inappropriate relationship with his executive assistant was exactly Woodward and Bernstein investigating the Watergate break-in.
Kind of wondering what a slow start would have been for the Oklahoma City Thunder.
What’s the over-under number on Francisco Lindor being the next star Met to go?
You worry that David Stearns is already wondering what his sell-by date is.
If Michigan does come after Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer, why wouldn’t he consider getting out of Tuscaloosa, where they act as if a 3-loss season after the schedule they played makes him some sort of security risk?
And if DeBoer does ever leave – Lane Kiffin is staying at LSU, right?
Right?
I know where the Knicks can hang an NBA Cup banner if they manage to win a tournament that feels like winning a member-guest in golf:
Mustang Harry’s bar over there near the Garden.
How many Bingo nights is Philip Rivers missing by coming out of retirement with the Colts?
At this point Daniel Jones has to be wondering just exactly what he did to make the football gods this angry at him.
Maybe the Mets really can end up with Tarik Skubal if the Tigers decide to trade him.
Just not if the Dodgers want him first.
When does Brian Cashman send David Stearns a gift basket?
An Amazon gift card at least.
I see where Freddie Kitchens is out as Bill Belichick’s offensive coordinator at North Carolina.
Like Freddie was the problem in Chapel Hill.
At least Bill’s events coordinator still has her job.
And, of course, a standing date for the prom.
