Mets’ Deal for Tampa’s Baez Not as Logical as It Seems
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The Mets are arguably the best team in baseball if they don’t do a thing between now and the beginning of spring training – or the World Baseball Classic, or whatever now marks the end of those long and ugly days without baseball.
Last year, they won 83 games; expected decline from veterans like Pedro Martinez, Tom Glavine, and Cliff Floyd should be offset by improvement from young players like Jose Reyes and David Wright, and a return to form for Carlos Beltran, so the same squad would probably win 83 games again.
It isn’t the same squad, of course; the Mets had the worst first basemen and closers in the league last year, and will instead have Carlos Delgado and Billy Wagner this year. Things look bright.
These being the Mets, though, it’s natural that everyone should focus on the team’s shortcomings: Unless you count Kazuo Matsui (and you shouldn’t), the team doesn’t have a second baseman. More crucially, there isn’t really much between the starters and Wagner. Aaron Heilman had a freakish season as a reliever, posting a 2.18 ERA and 3/1 strikeout-walk ratio while looking like the second coming of Keith Foulke, but he’s never had much success as a professional and can hardly be counted on for a repeat performance. (He’s demanding a trade if he isn’t put in the rotation anyway, which is, according to my sources, going to accompany the definition of chutzpah in the Yiddish-to-English dictionary due out later this year.)
The team has the usual collection of semi-promising young relievers like Heath Bell and useful-ish veterans like Chad Bradford laying around, but it’s a long way from what they have now to the sort of championship-caliber bullpens they regularly had under Bobby Valentine.
So, rumors that have the Mets looking to pry closer Danys Baez from the Tampa Bay Devil Rays make good sense. Over the last three years, Baez has rung up a 3.42 ERA in 216 innings with decent peripheral numbers, striking out 169 and walking 82 while allowing 22 home runs. He’s pitched well in the clutch, blowing only 21 saves out of 123 chances. He’s durable, reasonably young (he turns 29 in September, though his Cuban birth and grizzled visage might make one a bit skeptical about that) and fairly cheap, due to make only $4 million this year.
The asking price – the D-Rays are apparently willing to make the deal for Matsui and one of either Heilman or Jae Seo – doesn’t even seem that steep. Why, then, would it be a ill-advised move?
Think about it this way: The Mets right now have six starters: Martinez, Glavine, Seo, Steve Trachsel, Kris Benson, and Victor Zambrano. No one wants to see Zambrano in the rotation, so the most likely turn of events if a trade is made is that Baez would take over Heilman’s set-up spot while Heilman took over Seo’s rotation spot.
At best, that’s a wash. The main advantage Baez has over Heilman is that he’s reliable – he’s no Tom Gordon, but he’s a closer-quality pitcher who’s been awfully consistent over the last few years. This reliability, though, would come at the expense of greater disorder in the rotation. There is no real evidence that Heilman can start – he’s never done so successfully as a professional, and his two-pitch arsenal seems better suited to the pen. He credits his success last year to a change in arm slot; perhaps that’s so. It would be a good thing for him to prove to be a starter at least as good as Seo, who after a fine 2003 and an excellent 2005 can be considered at worst a cheap, durable no. 4 starter. This is no sure thing, though.
On the other hand, trading Heilman as part of a package for Baez would simply make no sense. The Mets don’t need different relievers; they need more of them. Baez and Heilman could form the core of an excellent crew of set-up men; with Baez alone, they’d have all the same problems in the bullpen that would result from trading Seo.
The main benefit to such a deal, as I see it, would be in getting rid of Matsui, who is awful. But if the Mets want to do that, they can always buy out his contract. They’re rich.
What, then, to do? I say the Mets should throw some money at free agent set-up man Julian Tavarez, whose 3.20 ERA in 214 2/3 IP over the last three years compares well to Baez’s record. Tavarez doesn’t strike out as many hitters, but he does allow fewer home runs, and his postseason experience and general orneriness make him still more desirable. Best of all, he’d cost nothing but money. If Baez can be had for a song, have him; otherwise go elsewhere. With or without him this team is as good as any other; there’s no reason to panic just because the fans are.
