The Fish That Got Away
Carlos Delgado has signed with the Florida Marlins for $1 million more than the Mets offered. (Actually, it’s been reported that all told the Mets offer would have been worth about $38,000 more but let’s not nitpick.) Delgado’s agent, David Sloan, appears to have used the Mets as a ploy to get more money out of the Marlins. Based on some of Sloan’s actions (like telling the press that the Mets were out of the running before telling Omar Minaya) it didn’t look like the agent had any interest at all in putting his only star client in New York.
As mentioned yesterday I had mixed feelings about the prospect of acquiring Delgado so I don’t really view it as a great loss. We’ll just watch him in Florida and see if he lives up to my Murray/Vaughn theory. (Of course the Murray/Vaughn theory doesn’t apply as much in Florida since the pressures are different in New York and definitely contributed to their downfalls.)
Be that as it may, the Mets immediately went to plan B and traded single A 1B Ian Bladergroen to the Red Sox for Doug Mientkiewicz. An official announcement will come later today. Mientkiewicz’s defensive prowess will help with the relatively inexperienced and out of position players in the rest of the infield and his bat, while not as great as Delgado’s, is not a tremendous liability. He’s got a .363 career OBP. We’ll see if he can continue such production in the NL.
In the final analysis, adding Mientkiewicz is an upgrade. It’s just not the upgrade that the Mets and most of the fans had in mind.
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