“Money Bags” Cohen and new president of baseball operations David Sterns have done it again. The two lifelong Mets fans turned baseball minds are giving Metropolitan fans exactly the kind of offseason they asked for by signing another former Yankee to the 2024 squad.
A few months ago the New York Mets named former Yankees bench coach Carlos Mendoza their new manager. A few days later they signed the washed-up Luis Severino to a 1-year deal to “sure up” the rotation. The move wasn’t bad, although signing a second-straight former Yankee was a bit odd.
Mets fans like myself were also hanging onto the ongoing assumption the team would sign Japanese superstar pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
He went to the Dodgers.
Still, I’ve held out hope that David Sterns would bring his dazzling baseball mind to Queens and find a way to fix the issues the Steve Cohen-era Mets have been dealing with.
That hope just got flushed down the toilet.
In the latest unfortunate news to come out of Queens, the New York Mets have agreed to a one-year deal with FORMER YANKEE outfielder Harrison Bader, because why the hell not.
Bader (who admittedly isn’t a bad ballplayer) is just the third Major League contract the Mets have given out this Winter. Two of them have been to former Yankees.
Let me remind you the New York Yankees finished 82-80 last season. The 29-year-old New York native Bader is a career .243 hitter and has collected just 460 hits during his 7-year career.
For those that hate batting average and are convinced advanced ananlystics are the only way to tell if a player is good, Harrison Bader has had an OPS+ of 85 or below in every year of his career but two. His career high OPS+ of 114 came in the COVID-shortened 2020 season.
Former-Met Dom Smith had an OPS+ of 168 that year.
Bader’s defensive metrics are spectacular (his career 12.1 WAR is almost entirely attributed to his gold glove caliber defense), but as we saw with the Mets a season ago, they need guys that can hit the ball, especially for power.
Harrison’s 59 home runs over 1865 career at-bats don’t exactly scream “slugger”.
So to recap, The Mets brought in a defensive specialist that plays the same position as arguably their best defensive player. Great signing guys. At least we have Joey Wendle to replace Ronny Mauricio and his bum knee.
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