Sandy Alderson better believe what he is saying.
The Mets general manager spent much of Monday discussing how pleased he is with the team’s plethora of promising pitchers, how the ceiling is so high for developing position players such as Juan Lagares and Wilmer Flores and Dilson Herrera, how the team is on the cusp of something great.
If help doesn’t come via trade this offseason, it will need to come from within the organization, as next year appears to be another in which the Mets will masquerade as a small-market club.
After last season, the Mets shed the contracts of Johan Santana and Jason Bay and used the increased flexibility to bring in Curtis Granderson (four years, $60 million), Bartolo Colon (two years, $29 million) and outfielder Chris Young (one year, $7.25 million), but with Young’s deal the biggest subtraction from the books, Alderson admits that will limit the team’s spending in free agency this offseason, following two straight seasons of ranking in the bottom-third of the majors in payroll.
“It’s gonna be prohibitive, but improving a team isn’t always a function of just dollars spent,” Alderson said Monday while visiting veterans at the V.A. Hospital in Manhattan, prior to the Mets’ 3-2 win against the Rockies. “Most of the improvement that came from the Mets this year had little to do with the overall [spending] … so it doesn’t equate. We’ll have some flexibility. We’ll be able to do some things. We just have to see what’s there.”
What’s there — in free agency — isn’t a whole lot. The Mets need to significantly upgrade their offense, particularly in the outfield and at shortstop, but the headliners of the upcoming offseason at those positions are an injury-prone 30-year-old shortstop — Hanley Ramirez — and a 30-year-old PED-offender — Melky Cabrera.
Breaking up the organization’s talented young arms in exchange for proven bats may be the only way the offense can ever stop wasting so many solid starts from its staff.
“In addition to the young players that are coming through, we need to add maybe one or two veterans next year,” Alderson said. “We need more offense than we’ve had this year. There’ve been two or three players who didn’t produce the way we would’ve liked. If one of them or two of them would’ve produced the way we would’ve liked, it would’ve been a whole different season. That’s the thing about free agents, you’ve got to be careful because they don’t all work ou t… the quick fix isn’t always the best.”
One way the offense may get an immediate boost is if the fences at Citi Field are brought in again.
Unprompted, Alderson told the group of veterans there have been discussions within the organization about reducing the distance to right-center field. At the new, unspecified distance, he said, Granderson would have seven additional home runs this season.
“It’s something that we had talked about the possibility in the past and we continue to look at it,” said Alderson. “We brought the fences in a couple years ago. It’s not about tailoring the ballpark to a particular player or a particular composition of team, it’s about making Citi Field as fan-friendly and as exciting as we can make it.”
Alderson’s 90-win goal in spring training was his way of creating excitement, serving a reminder that what has been the norm doesn’t need to remain the norm.
He is approaching next season no differently.
“It really wasn’t a prediction, it was about thinking differently,” Alderson said. “If you’re going to set a goal, you need to set a goal not that you can just achieve easily. You have to set a goal that’s aspirational.
“We’re not gonna get there [this year], but you know what? We played a lot better this year than we did last year. There’s no reason that next year we can’t do it.”
