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Speaker 1: As the World Series is upon us, we've got some off-season rumors. We're hearing some stuff about coaches, about players, about Tarek Skubal, about Steve Cohen, David Stearns, first base. We got a lot going on. Shout out Chelsea Janes making an appearance on the Mets pod where a lot of this stuff came out, as well as, you know, the articles are being posted everywhere all over the internet. Before we get going into it, make sure you guys are subscribed to Mets Stuff. Two videos minimum a week over here on the YouTube channel about the New York Mets. So if that's something you like, make sure you are subscribed. Big shout out to all our members who get access to these videos early. Sometimes it could even be a couple days early, depending on when we upload. And if you're listening to us, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, drops a rating, drops a review, download, and subscribe. Hey, Ben James, we haven't really talked like that dense of Mets stuff. Yeah, that's right. We've only done one episode of the Mets up this week. Only three videos in the wind-up. We haven't really talked that much at all in this last couple days. No, this is a quiet week. This is a quiet week. Mets are just... This is just waiting. I'm waiting right now. I want something to happen. I can't wait to watch this World Series, but for lots of Mets fans out there that are maybe not grabbed by all the intrigue between Rays versus Brewers, we just want to know what we're going to be able to get done before the lockout. And Mark said at the top, Chelsea Janes and Joe DiMeo, great podcast this week on the Mets pod. We talked about it with you guys a few days ago a little bit, but To dive deeper, because Chelsea is very blatantly now one of the Circle of Trust Mets reporters. She's the SMY insider. She's also a great reporter. She worked on a political campaign. She's good sourcing. And she let a lot of nuggets go with Joe that I think are really, really interesting as to how the Mets are going to handle themselves this offseason and still kind of how they're just viewed around the league, how players look at them. I think just to come off the top, because he's front of mind, he's going to pitch in a few days. The Freddy Peralta stuff continues to be very interesting about what happened with him between Brewers, Mets, and Rays and why, for some reason, on the edges he was really good and in the middle he was not. Yeah, I mean, we kind of knew that there was just a complete clusterfuck and mess of the leadership with the Mets over this past year, a lot of it having to do with having a lame duck manager and all these new coaches around him. bring in new guys, first-time coaching all over the place. And it seems like the relationship or the working relationship, I should say, because I don't think there's anything personally wrong here, but I think the working relationship between Freddy Peralta and what was Justin Willard at the time, pitching coach for the New York Mets, still is. Still is. Yeah, I know. I said that and I was like, wait, he's still hired. He's not going anywhere. It doesn't seem like there was much of a working relationship there. It seemed like There was a strain in that Justin Willard was a first-time pitching coach working with these major league pitchers, Freddy Peralta coming into the organization, pretty established, pretty dang good in his career, had a lot of things I think he enjoyed to do and was successful with, that it didn't mesh, that Justin Willard didn't necessarily have the confidence to get his message to Freddy Peralta, and that Freddy Peralta, because of that lack of confidence, might not necessarily have listened to Justin Willard as much. Also the timing of it all, Freddie was traded. It was still before pitchers and catchers, but it was relatively later in the off season. And he probably knew he was going to be traded because that's how the Brewers do business. But he was acquired by the Brewers. That was from the Mariners. And he was what, like 18, 19 years old. He came up, cut his teeth in that organization. As we all know, almost no one handles pitching development at any level better than the Milwaukee Brewers. Freddie Peralta went from unheralded prospect to borderline frontline pitcher in his time there. When you do that, You have so much trust in the process and the people around you. I think a lot of times we kind of think about, it's hard for us on the outside to understand the coaching, the player development, and all the stuff between players on the inside because athletes versus coaches at that level, there's so much riding on it, and you have so much personally to gain, especially with Freddie Peralta entering a platform, a contract year, that when you're suddenly getting new voices, coming off the best year of your career, you have the lowest ERA, you feel like you've done everything right, and there are people trying to change things, it's easy to be resistant to some of those things, whether or not you actually may have had to. And the fact that there was this disconnect and that Carlos Mendoza was not able to bridge that disconnect does kind of give us even more clarity on things that we've kind of suspected since the beginning of the season. Yeah, and this is not to say anything bad about Freddy Peralta as a player. He has some of the highest... remarks that I've honestly heard about a pitcher in a very long time about player in a long time everybody loves a great clubhouse guy all this kind of stuff so I wouldn't take the not listening between or the the lack of communication seem like between him and Willard as yeah as a negative on either it was like kind of the perfect storm of a situation where you have Justin Willard who was a very much behind the scenes guy now being thrown into the fire a little bit of like hey work with these pitchers you have to make these relationships and get your point across wasn't the strongest at doing it in year one. And Frank Peralta, who had to look out for himself over anything, was like, I just have all this data where I've been phenomenal with the Milwaukee Brewers. I'm not really going to change it when you don't really seem to be that confident in what you're saying either. And the other part of the perfect storm was that was the beginning of the season. I think as we got to the end of the season, we had a lot of Mets pitchers speaking glowingly about Willard. Christian Scott helped him get new pitches. Sean and I talked a lot about helping him work through all of his stuff. But Willard, We heard a little bit through the grapevine that if there was any shortcoming to him transitioning, moving up a role, it was in his ability as a communicator. And that was very easy to get masked when he was an assistant pitching coach in Boston. He was working under Andrew Bailey, who's renowned for being an amazing communicator, a former player. And as these things were going on at Freddy Peralta, I think it's easy for us Mets fans to forget that through the end of May, he was pitching fine. It was very much a Freddy Peralta season. He had made 12 starts. He'd gotten 60 innings. He had 3.8 ERA. Like, that was incredibly Freddie Peralta. He had high strikeouts. He had high walks. It was just very Freddie Peralta time. After that, hit the wall. ERA never recovered after the 10-run debacle. That was, like, right after Knicks Day? That was right after Knicks Day. Yeah, it was right after Knicks Day. Right after Knicks Day. Yeah, it was that weekend, June 20th. Yeah, I guess. Because, well, they had the one game against the Braves where they swept that series against the Braves. So it might have been, like, the week after. The parade day. Parade day. Yes, that's right. Parade day. Whatever it was. But then when Freddie gets traded, he hits a wall. Then it's easier to listen to some of these things. So again, this isn't anything defamatory about the player or the coach, but just about how there was a not great work environment that was created inside of the Mets building. That's more of what this was. Yeah, a lot of dysfunction going on, which is the most frustrating thing. And that seems to be Hopefully, in the rearview mirror, now that it seems like the coaching staff and the people that are in charge and the guys that are supposed to be leaders are actually there with around people that they work together well with, cohesion. Synergy now. Synergy, baby. All about that synergy. Love that synergy. Another interesting note, and I think one that's really worth talking about because it works diametrically opposed to the last time we spoke to you guys, that Chelsea hinted at the fact that the Mets may be kind of content with their first base situation. Yeah, which I don't love to hear. Between Jared Young and maybe a minor signing here or there, trying to do something like find the next Ty France. Yeah, because right now, again, we've talked about the first base options. The best options are on the trade market. Like if you were going to be going after someone realistically at a decent price, it's going to be on the trade market just because pretty sure Jake Bowers is going to get the QO from the Brewers. Chance, good chance there. It's a pretty good chance based on how he's played. He deserves it. And I don't think any team is going to go against the QO for a guy like Jake Bowers who– We think he's a good ball player, but the track record is very, very short. And then with Ty France, it seems like he wants to stay in San Diego, and I think they're going to keep him there. I don't think they are, actually. I think they are. They have to move the Crohn's zone back to first because he makes too much money and has too many years left to get rid of. He's just horrible. No, he's terrible, but you can't really do anything about that. He's like five years left in that contract. It'll be a big test for their ownership, but also Ty France is the platoon for Jake Cronenworth, and you kind of... You look around that team, like, yes, you have to play Jake Cronenworth, but do you? Because you need your players. That's my point, yeah. It depends what ownership does with that. I feel like they're not going to have, I feel like they're not going to be bold enough to make that move. I'll also say this, I don't think Ty France is interested in being a part of a platoon at first base. That's what I'm saying. Ty France wants a full-time job, no doubt, which is why I think, yeah, especially after we did this year, he's earned it for whatever next contract he gets. I think the Mets will still try to make minor moves. I think they have lots of internal faith in Jared Young. We've sort of been seeing Jared Young since he Got knocked out in the field. Yeah, it was very scary. Very scary. I think the Mets, in their perfect world, I think they hope that Jared Young can be like 70% of Jake Bowers. Yeah, I mean, like last year against right-handed pitching in about 100 games, 280 played appearances, 275 average, 339 on base, 450 slug, 793 OPS. Relatively speaking, if you can find his caddy on the right side to be a left-handed masher, then yes, Jared Young and that platoon can work, but I would also love to not go into the season relying on perfection from both of those guys at first base again. Definitely not, and also just because with a four-man bench in modern baseball, one's taken up by the catcher, one's taken up by a backup infielder, one's taken up by a backup outfielder, just to simply have a left-handed matching right-handed academy, we've seen over the last few years how that can really shrink a roster. Maybe... Maybe first base Francisco Alvarez to Venezuela in the league. Imagine that. Imagine if he's the right-handed caddy because you need that right-handed caddy to have some other function for your baseball team. You need to. You have to be able to play a different position. You have to be able to play the outfield. Maybe you could play catcher. You can't just be– it can't just be– it can't be Mark. It just simply cannot be Mark Vientos. It can't because he is a one-dimensional player, and he's not even really that good at it. He's fine at that dimension. That dimension is exactly what you described for Jared Young against left– righties. Yeah, I just... It's just not worth the roster spot. Correct, because at least Jared Young is the favorable platoon side. He will be in the... In a world where he plays for a full season, he'll get 450 plate appearances as opposed to 200. Yeah. And even... tongue-in-cheek talking about Young hopefully becoming Bowers. Bowers has had way more prospect pedigree. He was a former top prospect. Way more. Way more bat speed. Makes better swing decisions. Truthfully, we hope Brett Beatty becomes Jake Bowers. Yeah, that's true. And these guys are the same age right now. Jared Young and Jake Bowers are the same age. They're both 31. Yeah. So, again, that was... But I still think that That's just something most Mets fans really don't want to hear at the moment, is that if the Mets are looking for significant upgrades on this roster, among this position player group, it's not likely to be at first base. And the fact that they also seem very content with letting these prospects kind of begin to be the guys that figure it out for the rest of the infield. I mean, at some point you have to. They seemingly have no interest in moving on from Brett Beatty unless they get something that they think is going to be more valuable, which... I don't know why a team would do that right now. I don't think a team is going to offer that. It also seems like Ronnie Mauricio is in the same boat where he could also be one of these guys. He's gone. I don't know. I think they might give him one more chance just because Marcus Simeon is so toast. Simeon's toast, but you still go into next season with Simeon on the roster. Yes. The biggest thing here is that it seems like– It depends what Bo does. Yeah, it depends what Bo does. Now, after the quotes, we still think probably 85% chance Bo opts in. Yeah. That changes things a little bit. Another thing that Chelsea said, though, that ties into all of these conversations, that the Mets are seemingly very confident in Jefferson Rojas. They should be. Definitely. Us putting him in these trade packages, that may have been jumping the gun. It seems like the Mets, similar to Carson Bench heading into this past season, they want to give Jefferson Rojas every opportunity to make this club out of camp and be a starting infielder on this team. I don't remember if he's going to the Winter League. He is playing in the Winter League. But still coming into spring training with a chance to be a guy on this team on opening day next year. Yeah, and I hope he is. You got flashbanged there. What's going on? The light might have just croaked. That might have just been it. My right light. Oh, they came back. We're good now. I have too many more videos to record for this to be a problem right now. That absolutely smacked you in the face. That was an old-school Modern Warfare 2 flashbang. I can't see anything right now. All right, help me out. Back to it, though. The Mets have a lot of problems. The Mets have a lot of holes. Back to basics. The Mets have some issues. What I'm learning is that the Mets are really relying on hopefully the same guys that they had last year just being better, and I feel like that's a little scary. The part of it that's not scary is Lindor and Soto just not missing over 100 games. That part, less scary. Yeah, getting Soto, Lindor, and Bichette in the lineup next year for 130 games automatically makes this team so much better. Puts them right around 500 games. Bichette just playing well, again, assuming he's on this team. It's amazing he had such a bad year that he doesn't even want to opt out when this is the free agent class. But it does make sense considering how bad of a year he just had. So bad. I also do wonder, and I talked to Joe about this a little bit, just because Rojas seems like he profiles way better as a third baseman than a second baseman. If Bo goes to second? You just jerk Bo around again. You switch him. Oh, you're here? Guess what, now you play second. Yeah, you want to opt in? All right, thank you. Here you go. But that probably makes sense. Rojas is going to have a stronger arm. Yeah. I mean, bro, usually you'd like to put the younger guy more in the middle of the infield, but scouts have said he's a better third baseman, second baseman anyway. He's not going to play shortstop. I think also the way the Mets are going to move this offseason too is that DH spot's going to be very fluid. Which is another thing that people don't want to hear. Yeah, I don't think that they're going to find a permanent DH, especially with how this roster's built. I think Soto and Lindor are going to get more DH days. I think that's going to be one of the ways that they kind of mitigate the one Soto defense and two the Lindor, just nagging injuries that have accumulated over the last couple years. He probably just can't play 162 at shortstop every single day. No, definitely not at this age. And he prides himself on that, so that might be a tough adjustment. But 33 years old, you have to start making some adjustments, take care of yourself. You can do 140. Give him one day a week at DH. Like, that's probably something that's going to happen. Soto probably plays two days a week at DH. It also felt like some of the undercurrent of all of this was that the Mets– Internally, there might actually still be some belief in Jorge Polanco coming back, which I will really believe that when I see it. He's got like the Yao Ming injury. He's a foot and a half shorter. It just feels like he's one non-functional foot. Completely, like just kind of dragging around. We also thought some of these things last year, especially when the flurry happened with Pete and with Diaz, we were like, all right, this is going to be committed to the youth and we're going to see what things have. And then a lot of creativity happened, which, again, whether or not it was David Stearns or Steve Cohen that really wanted Bo Bichette. I mean, I feel like I've been hearing more and more things that we said very much at the beginning, which was, this felt like a Steve Cohen move. Gotta get a guy. Get me a star right now. Get me a name that I know. It's almost never worked out, by the way. No, maybe just Steve Cohen. We always talk about the joke that David Stearns might listen to this. Maybe Steve has to listen. Yeah, maybe Steve needs to start listening. Find them. Find them more so. Learn the names. Yeah, that's what it is. Learn the names. Just watch a draft. It's a good way to get you in. Watch the tier lists. Find out who's a great ball player or a baseball player. If you had to bet right now on opening day, is the Mets designated hither in the organization or not in the organization? In the organization. And who would you guess that is? Juan Soto. No shot. He's playing the outfield opening day, 100%. No, I think that the DH realistically on opening day is going to be someone inside the organization. And I think it's going to be a name that people are going to be disgusted to hear. If you say Mark Vientos, I'm going to stop. No, it's not going to be Mark Vientos. It's the other guy. It's going to be Brett Beatty. Brett Beatty's playing DH opening day. Brett Beatty's too good of a defender to be DH on opening day. Maybe Marcus Simeon's going to be DH on opening day for a guy in the organization. If Marcus Simeon is DH on opening day, I might shave my head. Okay. Yeah. No, I don't want to do that. If there's anybody on God's green earth that should not be DH on the New York Mets roster, it's the guy who can't hit. Well, I mean, we'll see about that. So is that in writing? You'll shave your head? No, I'm not doing that. Of course not. You don't have that much hair. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what events I'm going to be having, what opening day could possibly be. It might be June. It might be May. Who knows? Really? I mean, I have a lot of weddings to go to. I don't think I can show up bald. not bald i mean that's a little crew cut dude you get you get the little stripes on the side you get like the you can get the little thing in your eyebrow but then but then i need i need something from you i need the beard to be on the think about something i just i mean just think about like the intimidation the hardball the softball leagues if you if you're if you're faith up crew cut with the with the eyebrow patch i'd be looking really really different i think they're gonna think you're like possibly light-skinned venezuelan that would be on the table maybe i'd be on the table yeah Other things to talk about from this stuff. I mean, do we have anything more to talk about these position players? We just did a whole 35 minutes with you guys talking position players that we want. I feel like all of it now is not going to happen. All the guys that I'd want on the Mets, they're just not going to get because this roster, once again, is very clunky, which that's the biggest critique of David Stearns. I don't know how we've done this. We freed so much, and then we're like, what if we make it clunky again? Reclunk the whole thing. Well, I think the way it declunks is a non-tender to Mark Vientos, a non-tender to Ronnie Mauricio. of let the two years, say goodbye to Marcus Simeon with two years left on that contract. That's how you declunk this roster. I think there's no shot they non-tender Mauricio, but yeah, I think Rianto's gone. I feel like, I think Mauricio's going to be non-tender. I think unless that they know they're going to trade him. I think there's no way he's in this organization next year. I mean, it's just, I think the only reason you don't is because they don't have to right now. Like, they don't have to non-tender him. You're going to have a weird offseason where there's going to be a lot of times where you can't necessarily even sign these guys. Like, looking at the Mets 40-man roster, there's so many guys who are out of here. It's not like they need to get rid of Ronnie Mauricio. Mark Vientos needs to go. Well, I think the reason you may need to get rid of Ronnie Mauricio is because he will be taking up one of your four bench spots. He's no options left. He's on the 40-man roster. It's either he's on the active roster or he's not tender. I just think he gets DFA'd later if he's going to get going. Oh, he just makes it to spring training. Yeah, just makes it to spring training and might get DFA'd there. Where Mark Vientos, I think, is the guy. You just smell you later. That part was totally fair. Maybe Jared Young winds up being the opening day DH. Could be. Very well could be. The seven-hitter DH, and we do wind up getting, maybe we face a lefty. Who are we facing on opening day? That could play into this bet. Are we playing the Rockies, or who do we play? Someone weird? No, it is someone weird, but if it's a team of the lefty ace, then Marcus Semien opening day DH is super on the table. Can't be. It is. We are playing. Fun with schedules. It's the Marlins. It'll be probably Sandy. Sandy or Uri. All right, so it's probably not going to be Marcus Simeon. Marcus Simeon might not start. I don't even want to be on the team. Like, that's what I'm telling you right now. Poor Marcus Simeon. What a nice guy. We just... No, I know. It's just a shame that this has happened. It is a shame. Whatever. Oh, we should also probably just talk about the Tarek Skubal thing, too, again, just briefly. Yeah, it seems like that is all systems go. If I was a gambling man, which I am. Love it. Steve Cohen... is going to give Tarek Skubal an astronomical offer. I think it's going to blow the other teams out of the water. I don't think it's going to be a $ 5 million more, a $ 10 million more. It's going to be an offer he can't refuse. He's going to have to kiss the ring. I don't think Steve Cohen likes how embarrassed he's been publicly for owning the Mets. We know he actually definitely doesn't like being embarrassed publicly on the free agent market with what Kyle Tucker happened this past offseason. With what Steven Matz did to him a couple years ago. I mean, Yamamoto kind of felt like that. I think Yamamoto, too. I think he is going to full tilt and tell David Stearns, you're going to give him the most money ever for a pitcher. And he's going to have to say no. And if he says no, you're going to call back and say, double it. Give it to you. I almost think that that's not even part of this because looking at this, like doing free agency predictions we've been doing for our own channels, getting ready for offseason stuff with the windup, I don't know. I keep saying it, famous last words. I don't know which other team makes it competitive. I genuinely have no idea. I still think the Dodgers are. I don't buy it. I don't buy it. I absolutely do not, actually. Until they don't, I don't buy it. The Dodgers, they traded for Darvish. They didn't give him a contract. They traded for Machado, and they didn't give him a contract. Turner, Scherzer, no contracts. A little bit different, though. I don't know. The amount of money tied up in there. If they won this year, I totally would buy it. The fact that they lost. All those years I'm telling you, they didn't win. I know, but they were different, the Dodgers. They were a different team. Yeah, they had less money tied up in long-term deals. I know. Also, Otani not going under the knife makes me feel some weird things, too. Just in general? It could be a punt year. A punt year? It's not going to be a punt year. It could be a punt year where they're not going to go balls to the wall all in. That would help you. That would fit where you're going. No, but that's what I mean. I really don't think they will. I think they're trying to get out from under Glasnow and Teoscar the last years of their deal. I mean, maybe that would actually make them be more willing to jump in. I think they kind of have to. That's what I'm saying. The rotation's kind of mid-hot. I don't think they're going to add what's going to wind up being like an eight year, $ 340 million contract. I mean, it's totally possible. I'm just, until they don't, I'm not going to ever count them out. Sure. Fair. I'm not cutting them out, but I'm saying that they're distant right now. And I think besides them, unless the Cubs want to be men, unless the Tigers want to be men, the Braves want to stop pretending that they're poor. They'll never, they'll never do this. They would never even get to this. I even did. I, so I did a fun exercise on blue Jays. That's a sneaky one. Always forgetting them. The blue Jays will be the sneaky one, but, They have to pay up a lot more just because of Canada. Again, it's an even higher tax rate than New York. I guess Scooble definitely would go there. But they also just gave Cease a very fat contract. For sure. If they do this, they're going to wind up having over half a bill on that rotation. It still won't be that good of a rotation. And half a billion to Vlad Guerrero Jr. So you'll have a billion dollars tied up between Vlad, Cease, Scooble. That just doesn't seem like the way– and the Mets would be the same thing with Lindor, Soto, Scooble. The Mets have a billion tied up to two players. There you go. That's true. I was even looking at this recently. I'm doing a video on my channel soon where I'm going through the highest paid free agent pitcher and hitter every single year since 2010 and putting them on the tier list. Not as many catastrophic pitchers as I thought there would be. Like catastrophically bad? Like catastrophically bad contracts. Well, I think it's because, and maybe this is crazy to say, it feels like the pitching ages more gracefully than the hitters and the guys who have gotten the mega money. Sometimes. most years, we know are, like, the best pitchers in baseball. Definitely. Like, the outlier, I feel, is Patrick Corbin when he got the bag. It was kind of like, really? That was when we were all like, yeah, come on. But they won a World Series, so who fucking cares? That was also the same, like, with a guy like Hosmer, where, like, Hosmer got that deal. We were all like, this is not, this isn't going to work out. He hits 21 home runs a year. If he's lucky, that might be his career high. But, like, when you look at the bats, and again, a lot of this has changed in the last, like, five years. Everyone's gotten a lot smarter. But, like, the Cole contract... Even if he doesn't pitch anymore, it's going to wind up being great. Yamamoto, cease. Like, those Granke contracts. Even the one with the Dimebacks didn't feel that good, but still wound up being totally fine. The one he signed after he left the Dodgers. It looked very good. Yeah, like the Cliff Lee one. It took his arm exploding. Yeah, Zach Wheeler. Yeah, Wheeler contract is awesome. Like, Yamamoto, I just said, too, the first Scherzer contract, one of the best contracts ever given out in general. Like, it's– Strasburg was the bad one, but that was because his arm fell off. Yeah, I think that a lot of people just kind of think that David Stearns won't give it out. David Stearns will. He will give this contract. He's been very, very clear that if there is that good of a player available, the Mets and himself would love to bring him to the team. Why would you not? Especially if you've got unlimited money like Steve Cohen apparently makes it feel like we have. This should be Juan Soto and him. I think they've had circled for years as these are the guys. Yeah. We'll do another video soon about whether or not that contract actually will wind up good. I think that'd be a funny thing to talk about, but they're going to make this an absolute priority. They should make an absolute priority. They should probably, it's going to be a weird situation because a lot of these guys are going to sign before the lockout. School might wait to the last possible second before the lockout. So you're probably going to wind up missing out on the Michael Kings and who's some of the other big free edge pitchers out there. Sonny Gray. He's not coming back. He would never come back here. No, that's a country boy. Um, Like, Michael King is from the New York area. That would be one I would highly consider. But you're not going to wind up signing two of them, and you kind of have to pull all your eggs in a Scooble basket at this point. We do know the pitching market is super active as well. Yeah, tons of trades available. If you miss Scooble, you can still, like we said two videos ago, Logan Gilbert and who's the other guy who's a free agent at the end of the year? We literally left the video with Logan Gilbert and somebody else. Razmy, Raz. Raz, Raz. There it was. There it was, yeah. He's not pitching tonight, so I forgot about him. Last thing to mention, Mets need a hitting coach right now, and they had a meeting with Kevin Long. I love that. Love Kevin Long. Like, maybe this is just me, like, being obsessed with the 2015 Mets, and that's, like, one of my favorite teams ever, but Kevin Long, everywhere he goes, just great hitters. Always great hitters, and everyone always has the best things to say. Besides the Phillies last year. Besides the Phillies. Yeah, but those guys have no talent, so that's the difference. Um, but I mean, Schwarber's gotten better since he went to the Phillies. He's gotten to another level. I think Juan Soto loves him. Juan Soto loves him. I think that's a big thing. Uh, something that I've always heard about Kevin Long and like everyone who's seemed to work with him, especially left-handed hitters. He does an exceptional job with specifically he find like he's a big, and we've had Daniel Murphy on the podcast. Talk about this to hit the ball over. the outfielders hit it over the player's head. He wants you to drive the baseball. He wants you to find the power. That's how you become a productive hitter. And I think that that's something that hasn't necessarily always been what the Mets have been doing the last couple of years. And we did hear some little trickled comments about how Jeff Albert is now no longer with the organization. Also may not have been like the best communicator ever either. It seemed like he could have rubbed some guys the wrong way. So just getting someone that senior in the room, like Kevin Long seems like it'd be good. We also have to have a article from Will Salmon last week. I thought it was interesting. about the Mets expanding pro scouting department. That's good. A lot of the Baseball America guys, Kyle Glazer, J.J. Cooper, Matt Eddy, I've seen tweeting about recently how valuable pro scouting is. You guys have seen probably a lot of these graphics going out that the Rays, the Dodgers, and the Brewers have the three biggest pro scouting departments in all of baseball. I think there's a funny push and pull with pro scouting where people think it's like the old school money ball. Like, guy's got a good face. Where I think now it's kind of like, You let the data direct you to places, and then you let the scouts go there to see if the data's lying to you. Yeah, it's traits. You're looking for traits. You're looking for traits. You also want to look for feel. Remember when we went to the Fall League and everything about Marcus Luciano? Marco Luciano's data was incredible. Then we watched his shoulders slump and not get down on ground balls. That guy's an avid. I remember me and you watching Marco Luciano take on-deck swings and being like, I'm out. I have no interest in this guy. And granted, we were drooling over Sully Matias. Shout out Sully Matias. That guy hit the furthest ball I've ever seen. I love it also when we yapped at one of the scouts there, and he was like, who do you not like? Who do you like? And we mentioned Sully Matias. He was like, why do you like him? Did you see him hit that baseball? He hit one 490. It's the difference between professionals and you and I. But you and I, when we were 26 years old, very different men. Yes, very different. I do think that's something the Mets have a smaller pro scouting department as they beefed up other areas of the organization. I think it's something they definitely need. It's hard to hire that many new people every single cycle. The Mets have been hiring a lot of these other org people over the last few years. I also think it's a good bit of PR, too. Yes. You tell Joe from Massapequa the Mets are getting more in-person scouting. Like, hell, your organization is going back in the right direction. Of course, yeah. Realistically, what we're doing is just continuing to modernize the back end of the organization, which we still need to do. Mets should just hire us. Get a notebook. Go to games and just do this. Sit behind home plate and just write things down. Pop the radar gun. Get a radar gun out manually. It doesn't even work. Just optically, it's good. No, what we tell you, actually, no, this radar gun is taking velocity measurements like they did 30 years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the proper way. See, Mizorowski's not really throwing that hard. No, come on. These other guys, they're way harder. If people don't listen to the wind-up, World Series prediction. World Series prediction, what did I say? I said Brewers in seven, I think? Yeah, I said Rays in seven. Yeah, which is funny because I had the Rays jersey on, but Brewers in seven. It's also funny. I have now officially picked against the Brewers every series this postseason. That's good. Brewers fans that are listening to Mets stuff, you should be happy. Winning against me, but all we got. That's all we got. Thank you guys for watching. Make sure you subscribe to Mets stuff over here on YouTube. Listen to us, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google. Drop us a rating, drop us a review, download, and subscribe. You can follow James on social media at James Chiano. I'm Giraffe Nick Mark. We'll catch you guys on the next one. Peace out. Peace out, guys. Go Mets.
Speaker 1: As the World Series is upon us, we've got some off-season rumors. We're hearing some stuff about coaches, about players, about Tarek Skubal, about Steve Cohen, David Stearns, first base. We got a lot going on. Shout out Chelsea Janes making an appearance on the Mets pod where a lot of this stuff came out, as well as, you know, the articles are being posted everywhere all over the internet. Before we get going into it, make sure you guys are subscribed to Mets Stuff. Two videos minimum a week over here on the YouTube channel about the New York Mets. So if that's something you like, make sure you are subscribed. Big shout out to all our members who get access to these videos early. Sometimes it could even be a couple days early, depending on when we upload. And if you're listening to us, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, drops a rating, drops a review, download, and subscribe. Hey, Ben James, we haven't really talked like that dense of Mets stuff. Yeah, that's right. We've only done one episode of the Mets up this week. Only three videos in the wind-up. We haven't really talked that much at all in this last couple days. No, this is a quiet week. This is a quiet week. Mets are just... This is just waiting. I'm waiting right now. I want something to happen. I can't wait to watch this World Series, but for lots of Mets fans out there that are maybe not grabbed by all the intrigue between Rays versus Brewers, we just want to know what we're going to be able to get done before the lockout. And Mark said at the top, Chelsea Janes and Joe DiMeo, great podcast this week on the Mets pod. We talked about it with you guys a few days ago a little bit, but To dive deeper, because Chelsea is very blatantly now one of the Circle of Trust Mets reporters. She's the SMY insider. She's also a great reporter. She worked on a political campaign. She's good sourcing. And she let a lot of nuggets go with Joe that I think are really, really interesting as to how the Mets are going to handle themselves this offseason and still kind of how they're just viewed around the league, how players look at them. I think just to come off the top, because he's front of mind, he's going to pitch in a few days. The Freddy Peralta stuff continues to be very interesting about what happened with him between Brewers, Mets, and Rays and why, for some reason, on the edges he was really good and in the middle he was not. Yeah, I mean, we kind of knew that there was just a complete clusterfuck and mess of the leadership with the Mets over this past year, a lot of it having to do with having a lame duck manager and all these new coaches around him. bring in new guys, first-time coaching all over the place. And it seems like the relationship or the working relationship, I should say, because I don't think there's anything personally wrong here, but I think the working relationship between Freddy Peralta and what was Justin Willard at the time, pitching coach for the New York Mets, still is. Still is. Yeah, I know. I said that and I was like, wait, he's still hired. He's not going anywhere. It doesn't seem like there was much of a working relationship there. It seemed like There was a strain in that Justin Willard was a first-time pitching coach working with these major league pitchers, Freddy Peralta coming into the organization, pretty established, pretty dang good in his career, had a lot of things I think he enjoyed to do and was successful with, that it didn't mesh, that Justin Willard didn't necessarily have the confidence to get his message to Freddy Peralta, and that Freddy Peralta, because of that lack of confidence, might not necessarily have listened to Justin Willard as much. Also the timing of it all, Freddie was traded. It was still before pitchers and catchers, but it was relatively later in the off season. And he probably knew he was going to be traded because that's how the Brewers do business. But he was acquired by the Brewers. That was from the Mariners. And he was what, like 18, 19 years old. He came up, cut his teeth in that organization. As we all know, almost no one handles pitching development at any level better than the Milwaukee Brewers. Freddie Peralta went from unheralded prospect to borderline frontline pitcher in his time there. When you do that, You have so much trust in the process and the people around you. I think a lot of times we kind of think about, it's hard for us on the outside to understand the coaching, the player development, and all the stuff between players on the inside because athletes versus coaches at that level, there's so much riding on it, and you have so much personally to gain, especially with Freddie Peralta entering a platform, a contract year, that when you're suddenly getting new voices, coming off the best year of your career, you have the lowest ERA, you feel like you've done everything right, and there are people trying to change things, it's easy to be resistant to some of those things, whether or not you actually may have had to. And the fact that there was this disconnect and that Carlos Mendoza was not able to bridge that disconnect does kind of give us even more clarity on things that we've kind of suspected since the beginning of the season. Yeah, and this is not to say anything bad about Freddy Peralta as a player. He has some of the highest... remarks that I've honestly heard about a pitcher in a very long time about player in a long time everybody loves a great clubhouse guy all this kind of stuff so I wouldn't take the not listening between or the the lack of communication seem like between him and Willard as yeah as a negative on either it was like kind of the perfect storm of a situation where you have Justin Willard who was a very much behind the scenes guy now being thrown into the fire a little bit of like hey work with these pitchers you have to make these relationships and get your point across wasn't the strongest at doing it in year one. And Frank Peralta, who had to look out for himself over anything, was like, I just have all this data where I've been phenomenal with the Milwaukee Brewers. I'm not really going to change it when you don't really seem to be that confident in what you're saying either. And the other part of the perfect storm was that was the beginning of the season. I think as we got to the end of the season, we had a lot of Mets pitchers speaking glowingly about Willard. Christian Scott helped him get new pitches. Sean and I talked a lot about helping him work through all of his stuff. But Willard, We heard a little bit through the grapevine that if there was any shortcoming to him transitioning, moving up a role, it was in his ability as a communicator. And that was very easy to get masked when he was an assistant pitching coach in Boston. He was working under Andrew Bailey, who's renowned for being an amazing communicator, a former player. And as these things were going on at Freddy Peralta, I think it's easy for us Mets fans to forget that through the end of May, he was pitching fine. It was very much a Freddy Peralta season. He had made 12 starts. He'd gotten 60 innings. He had 3.8 ERA. Like, that was incredibly Freddie Peralta. He had high strikeouts. He had high walks. It was just very Freddie Peralta time. After that, hit the wall. ERA never recovered after the 10-run debacle. That was, like, right after Knicks Day? That was right after Knicks Day. Yeah, it was right after Knicks Day. Right after Knicks Day. Yeah, it was that weekend, June 20th. Yeah, I guess. Because, well, they had the one game against the Braves where they swept that series against the Braves. So it might have been, like, the week after. The parade day. Parade day. Yes, that's right. Parade day. Whatever it was. But then when Freddie gets traded, he hits a wall. Then it's easier to listen to some of these things. So again, this isn't anything defamatory about the player or the coach, but just about how there was a not great work environment that was created inside of the Mets building. That's more of what this was. Yeah, a lot of dysfunction going on, which is the most frustrating thing. And that seems to be Hopefully, in the rearview mirror, now that it seems like the coaching staff and the people that are in charge and the guys that are supposed to be leaders are actually there with around people that they work together well with, cohesion. Synergy now. Synergy, baby. All about that synergy. Love that synergy. Another interesting note, and I think one that's really worth talking about because it works diametrically opposed to the last time we spoke to you guys, that Chelsea hinted at the fact that the Mets may be kind of content with their first base situation. Yeah, which I don't love to hear. Between Jared Young and maybe a minor signing here or there, trying to do something like find the next Ty France. Yeah, because right now, again, we've talked about the first base options. The best options are on the trade market. Like if you were going to be going after someone realistically at a decent price, it's going to be on the trade market just because pretty sure Jake Bowers is going to get the QO from the Brewers. Chance, good chance there. It's a pretty good chance based on how he's played. He deserves it. And I don't think any team is going to go against the QO for a guy like Jake Bowers who– We think he's a good ball player, but the track record is very, very short. And then with Ty France, it seems like he wants to stay in San Diego, and I think they're going to keep him there. I don't think they are, actually. I think they are. They have to move the Crohn's zone back to first because he makes too much money and has too many years left to get rid of. He's just horrible. No, he's terrible, but you can't really do anything about that. He's like five years left in that contract. It'll be a big test for their ownership, but also Ty France is the platoon for Jake Cronenworth, and you kind of... You look around that team, like, yes, you have to play Jake Cronenworth, but do you? Because you need your players. That's my point, yeah. It depends what ownership does with that. I feel like they're not going to have, I feel like they're not going to be bold enough to make that move. I'll also say this, I don't think Ty France is interested in being a part of a platoon at first base. That's what I'm saying. Ty France wants a full-time job, no doubt, which is why I think, yeah, especially after we did this year, he's earned it for whatever next contract he gets. I think the Mets will still try to make minor moves. I think they have lots of internal faith in Jared Young. We've sort of been seeing Jared Young since he Got knocked out in the field. Yeah, it was very scary. Very scary. I think the Mets, in their perfect world, I think they hope that Jared Young can be like 70% of Jake Bowers. Yeah, I mean, like last year against right-handed pitching in about 100 games, 280 played appearances, 275 average, 339 on base, 450 slug, 793 OPS. Relatively speaking, if you can find his caddy on the right side to be a left-handed masher, then yes, Jared Young and that platoon can work, but I would also love to not go into the season relying on perfection from both of those guys at first base again. Definitely not, and also just because with a four-man bench in modern baseball, one's taken up by the catcher, one's taken up by a backup infielder, one's taken up by a backup outfielder, just to simply have a left-handed matching right-handed academy, we've seen over the last few years how that can really shrink a roster. Maybe... Maybe first base Francisco Alvarez to Venezuela in the league. Imagine that. Imagine if he's the right-handed caddy because you need that right-handed caddy to have some other function for your baseball team. You need to. You have to be able to play a different position. You have to be able to play the outfield. Maybe you could play catcher. You can't just be– it can't just be– it can't be Mark. It just simply cannot be Mark Vientos. It can't because he is a one-dimensional player, and he's not even really that good at it. He's fine at that dimension. That dimension is exactly what you described for Jared Young against left– righties. Yeah, I just... It's just not worth the roster spot. Correct, because at least Jared Young is the favorable platoon side. He will be in the... In a world where he plays for a full season, he'll get 450 plate appearances as opposed to 200. Yeah. And even... tongue-in-cheek talking about Young hopefully becoming Bowers. Bowers has had way more prospect pedigree. He was a former top prospect. Way more. Way more bat speed. Makes better swing decisions. Truthfully, we hope Brett Beatty becomes Jake Bowers. Yeah, that's true. And these guys are the same age right now. Jared Young and Jake Bowers are the same age. They're both 31. Yeah. So, again, that was... But I still think that That's just something most Mets fans really don't want to hear at the moment, is that if the Mets are looking for significant upgrades on this roster, among this position player group, it's not likely to be at first base. And the fact that they also seem very content with letting these prospects kind of begin to be the guys that figure it out for the rest of the infield. I mean, at some point you have to. They seemingly have no interest in moving on from Brett Beatty unless they get something that they think is going to be more valuable, which... I don't know why a team would do that right now. I don't think a team is going to offer that. It also seems like Ronnie Mauricio is in the same boat where he could also be one of these guys. He's gone. I don't know. I think they might give him one more chance just because Marcus Simeon is so toast. Simeon's toast, but you still go into next season with Simeon on the roster. Yes. The biggest thing here is that it seems like– It depends what Bo does. Yeah, it depends what Bo does. Now, after the quotes, we still think probably 85% chance Bo opts in. Yeah. That changes things a little bit. Another thing that Chelsea said, though, that ties into all of these conversations, that the Mets are seemingly very confident in Jefferson Rojas. They should be. Definitely. Us putting him in these trade packages, that may have been jumping the gun. It seems like the Mets, similar to Carson Bench heading into this past season, they want to give Jefferson Rojas every opportunity to make this club out of camp and be a starting infielder on this team. I don't remember if he's going to the Winter League. He is playing in the Winter League. But still coming into spring training with a chance to be a guy on this team on opening day next year. Yeah, and I hope he is. You got flashbanged there. What's going on? The light might have just croaked. That might have just been it. My right light. Oh, they came back. We're good now. I have too many more videos to record for this to be a problem right now. That absolutely smacked you in the face. That was an old-school Modern Warfare 2 flashbang. I can't see anything right now. All right, help me out. Back to it, though. The Mets have a lot of problems. The Mets have a lot of holes. Back to basics. The Mets have some issues. What I'm learning is that the Mets are really relying on hopefully the same guys that they had last year just being better, and I feel like that's a little scary. The part of it that's not scary is Lindor and Soto just not missing over 100 games. That part, less scary. Yeah, getting Soto, Lindor, and Bichette in the lineup next year for 130 games automatically makes this team so much better. Puts them right around 500 games. Bichette just playing well, again, assuming he's on this team. It's amazing he had such a bad year that he doesn't even want to opt out when this is the free agent class. But it does make sense considering how bad of a year he just had. So bad. I also do wonder, and I talked to Joe about this a little bit, just because Rojas seems like he profiles way better as a third baseman than a second baseman. If Bo goes to second? You just jerk Bo around again. You switch him. Oh, you're here? Guess what, now you play second. Yeah, you want to opt in? All right, thank you. Here you go. But that probably makes sense. Rojas is going to have a stronger arm. Yeah. I mean, bro, usually you'd like to put the younger guy more in the middle of the infield, but scouts have said he's a better third baseman, second baseman anyway. He's not going to play shortstop. I think also the way the Mets are going to move this offseason too is that DH spot's going to be very fluid. Which is another thing that people don't want to hear. Yeah, I don't think that they're going to find a permanent DH, especially with how this roster's built. I think Soto and Lindor are going to get more DH days. I think that's going to be one of the ways that they kind of mitigate the one Soto defense and two the Lindor, just nagging injuries that have accumulated over the last couple years. He probably just can't play 162 at shortstop every single day. No, definitely not at this age. And he prides himself on that, so that might be a tough adjustment. But 33 years old, you have to start making some adjustments, take care of yourself. You can do 140. Give him one day a week at DH. Like, that's probably something that's going to happen. Soto probably plays two days a week at DH. It also felt like some of the undercurrent of all of this was that the Mets– Internally, there might actually still be some belief in Jorge Polanco coming back, which I will really believe that when I see it. He's got like the Yao Ming injury. He's a foot and a half shorter. It just feels like he's one non-functional foot. Completely, like just kind of dragging around. We also thought some of these things last year, especially when the flurry happened with Pete and with Diaz, we were like, all right, this is going to be committed to the youth and we're going to see what things have. And then a lot of creativity happened, which, again, whether or not it was David Stearns or Steve Cohen that really wanted Bo Bichette. I mean, I feel like I've been hearing more and more things that we said very much at the beginning, which was, this felt like a Steve Cohen move. Gotta get a guy. Get me a star right now. Get me a name that I know. It's almost never worked out, by the way. No, maybe just Steve Cohen. We always talk about the joke that David Stearns might listen to this. Maybe Steve has to listen. Yeah, maybe Steve needs to start listening. Find them. Find them more so. Learn the names. Yeah, that's what it is. Learn the names. Just watch a draft. It's a good way to get you in. Watch the tier lists. Find out who's a great ball player or a baseball player. If you had to bet right now on opening day, is the Mets designated hither in the organization or not in the organization? In the organization. And who would you guess that is? Juan Soto. No shot. He's playing the outfield opening day, 100%. No, I think that the DH realistically on opening day is going to be someone inside the organization. And I think it's going to be a name that people are going to be disgusted to hear. If you say Mark Vientos, I'm going to stop. No, it's not going to be Mark Vientos. It's the other guy. It's going to be Brett Beatty. Brett Beatty's playing DH opening day. Brett Beatty's too good of a defender to be DH on opening day. Maybe Marcus Simeon's going to be DH on opening day for a guy in the organization. If Marcus Simeon is DH on opening day, I might shave my head. Okay. Yeah. No, I don't want to do that. If there's anybody on God's green earth that should not be DH on the New York Mets roster, it's the guy who can't hit. Well, I mean, we'll see about that. So is that in writing? You'll shave your head? No, I'm not doing that. Of course not. You don't have that much hair. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what events I'm going to be having, what opening day could possibly be. It might be June. It might be May. Who knows? Really? I mean, I have a lot of weddings to go to. I don't think I can show up bald. not bald i mean that's a little crew cut dude you get you get the little stripes on the side you get like the you can get the little thing in your eyebrow but then but then i need i need something from you i need the beard to be on the think about something i just i mean just think about like the intimidation the hardball the softball leagues if you if you're if you're faith up crew cut with the with the eyebrow patch i'd be looking really really different i think they're gonna think you're like possibly light-skinned venezuelan that would be on the table maybe i'd be on the table yeah Other things to talk about from this stuff. I mean, do we have anything more to talk about these position players? We just did a whole 35 minutes with you guys talking position players that we want. I feel like all of it now is not going to happen. All the guys that I'd want on the Mets, they're just not going to get because this roster, once again, is very clunky, which that's the biggest critique of David Stearns. I don't know how we've done this. We freed so much, and then we're like, what if we make it clunky again? Reclunk the whole thing. Well, I think the way it declunks is a non-tender to Mark Vientos, a non-tender to Ronnie Mauricio. of let the two years, say goodbye to Marcus Simeon with two years left on that contract. That's how you declunk this roster. I think there's no shot they non-tender Mauricio, but yeah, I think Rianto's gone. I feel like, I think Mauricio's going to be non-tender. I think unless that they know they're going to trade him. I think there's no way he's in this organization next year. I mean, it's just, I think the only reason you don't is because they don't have to right now. Like, they don't have to non-tender him. You're going to have a weird offseason where there's going to be a lot of times where you can't necessarily even sign these guys. Like, looking at the Mets 40-man roster, there's so many guys who are out of here. It's not like they need to get rid of Ronnie Mauricio. Mark Vientos needs to go. Well, I think the reason you may need to get rid of Ronnie Mauricio is because he will be taking up one of your four bench spots. He's no options left. He's on the 40-man roster. It's either he's on the active roster or he's not tender. I just think he gets DFA'd later if he's going to get going. Oh, he just makes it to spring training. Yeah, just makes it to spring training and might get DFA'd there. Where Mark Vientos, I think, is the guy. You just smell you later. That part was totally fair. Maybe Jared Young winds up being the opening day DH. Could be. Very well could be. The seven-hitter DH, and we do wind up getting, maybe we face a lefty. Who are we facing on opening day? That could play into this bet. Are we playing the Rockies, or who do we play? Someone weird? No, it is someone weird, but if it's a team of the lefty ace, then Marcus Semien opening day DH is super on the table. Can't be. It is. We are playing. Fun with schedules. It's the Marlins. It'll be probably Sandy. Sandy or Uri. All right, so it's probably not going to be Marcus Simeon. Marcus Simeon might not start. I don't even want to be on the team. Like, that's what I'm telling you right now. Poor Marcus Simeon. What a nice guy. We just... No, I know. It's just a shame that this has happened. It is a shame. Whatever. Oh, we should also probably just talk about the Tarek Skubal thing, too, again, just briefly. Yeah, it seems like that is all systems go. If I was a gambling man, which I am. Love it. Steve Cohen... is going to give Tarek Skubal an astronomical offer. I think it's going to blow the other teams out of the water. I don't think it's going to be a $ 5 million more, a $ 10 million more. It's going to be an offer he can't refuse. He's going to have to kiss the ring. I don't think Steve Cohen likes how embarrassed he's been publicly for owning the Mets. We know he actually definitely doesn't like being embarrassed publicly on the free agent market with what Kyle Tucker happened this past offseason. With what Steven Matz did to him a couple years ago. I mean, Yamamoto kind of felt like that. I think Yamamoto, too. I think he is going to full tilt and tell David Stearns, you're going to give him the most money ever for a pitcher. And he's going to have to say no. And if he says no, you're going to call back and say, double it. Give it to you. I almost think that that's not even part of this because looking at this, like doing free agency predictions we've been doing for our own channels, getting ready for offseason stuff with the windup, I don't know. I keep saying it, famous last words. I don't know which other team makes it competitive. I genuinely have no idea. I still think the Dodgers are. I don't buy it. I don't buy it. I absolutely do not, actually. Until they don't, I don't buy it. The Dodgers, they traded for Darvish. They didn't give him a contract. They traded for Machado, and they didn't give him a contract. Turner, Scherzer, no contracts. A little bit different, though. I don't know. The amount of money tied up in there. If they won this year, I totally would buy it. The fact that they lost. All those years I'm telling you, they didn't win. I know, but they were different, the Dodgers. They were a different team. Yeah, they had less money tied up in long-term deals. I know. Also, Otani not going under the knife makes me feel some weird things, too. Just in general? It could be a punt year. A punt year? It's not going to be a punt year. It could be a punt year where they're not going to go balls to the wall all in. That would help you. That would fit where you're going. No, but that's what I mean. I really don't think they will. I think they're trying to get out from under Glasnow and Teoscar the last years of their deal. I mean, maybe that would actually make them be more willing to jump in. I think they kind of have to. That's what I'm saying. The rotation's kind of mid-hot. I don't think they're going to add what's going to wind up being like an eight year, $ 340 million contract. I mean, it's totally possible. I'm just, until they don't, I'm not going to ever count them out. Sure. Fair. I'm not cutting them out, but I'm saying that they're distant right now. And I think besides them, unless the Cubs want to be men, unless the Tigers want to be men, the Braves want to stop pretending that they're poor. They'll never, they'll never do this. They would never even get to this. I even did. I, so I did a fun exercise on blue Jays. That's a sneaky one. Always forgetting them. The blue Jays will be the sneaky one, but, They have to pay up a lot more just because of Canada. Again, it's an even higher tax rate than New York. I guess Scooble definitely would go there. But they also just gave Cease a very fat contract. For sure. If they do this, they're going to wind up having over half a bill on that rotation. It still won't be that good of a rotation. And half a billion to Vlad Guerrero Jr. So you'll have a billion dollars tied up between Vlad, Cease, Scooble. That just doesn't seem like the way– and the Mets would be the same thing with Lindor, Soto, Scooble. The Mets have a billion tied up to two players. There you go. That's true. I was even looking at this recently. I'm doing a video on my channel soon where I'm going through the highest paid free agent pitcher and hitter every single year since 2010 and putting them on the tier list. Not as many catastrophic pitchers as I thought there would be. Like catastrophically bad? Like catastrophically bad contracts. Well, I think it's because, and maybe this is crazy to say, it feels like the pitching ages more gracefully than the hitters and the guys who have gotten the mega money. Sometimes. most years, we know are, like, the best pitchers in baseball. Definitely. Like, the outlier, I feel, is Patrick Corbin when he got the bag. It was kind of like, really? That was when we were all like, yeah, come on. But they won a World Series, so who fucking cares? That was also the same, like, with a guy like Hosmer, where, like, Hosmer got that deal. We were all like, this is not, this isn't going to work out. He hits 21 home runs a year. If he's lucky, that might be his career high. But, like, when you look at the bats, and again, a lot of this has changed in the last, like, five years. Everyone's gotten a lot smarter. But, like, the Cole contract... Even if he doesn't pitch anymore, it's going to wind up being great. Yamamoto, cease. Like, those Granke contracts. Even the one with the Dimebacks didn't feel that good, but still wound up being totally fine. The one he signed after he left the Dodgers. It looked very good. Yeah, like the Cliff Lee one. It took his arm exploding. Yeah, Zach Wheeler. Yeah, Wheeler contract is awesome. Like, Yamamoto, I just said, too, the first Scherzer contract, one of the best contracts ever given out in general. Like, it's– Strasburg was the bad one, but that was because his arm fell off. Yeah, I think that a lot of people just kind of think that David Stearns won't give it out. David Stearns will. He will give this contract. He's been very, very clear that if there is that good of a player available, the Mets and himself would love to bring him to the team. Why would you not? Especially if you've got unlimited money like Steve Cohen apparently makes it feel like we have. This should be Juan Soto and him. I think they've had circled for years as these are the guys. Yeah. We'll do another video soon about whether or not that contract actually will wind up good. I think that'd be a funny thing to talk about, but they're going to make this an absolute priority. They should make an absolute priority. They should probably, it's going to be a weird situation because a lot of these guys are going to sign before the lockout. School might wait to the last possible second before the lockout. So you're probably going to wind up missing out on the Michael Kings and who's some of the other big free edge pitchers out there. Sonny Gray. He's not coming back. He would never come back here. No, that's a country boy. Um, Like, Michael King is from the New York area. That would be one I would highly consider. But you're not going to wind up signing two of them, and you kind of have to pull all your eggs in a Scooble basket at this point. We do know the pitching market is super active as well. Yeah, tons of trades available. If you miss Scooble, you can still, like we said two videos ago, Logan Gilbert and who's the other guy who's a free agent at the end of the year? We literally left the video with Logan Gilbert and somebody else. Razmy, Raz. Raz, Raz. There it was. There it was, yeah. He's not pitching tonight, so I forgot about him. Last thing to mention, Mets need a hitting coach right now, and they had a meeting with Kevin Long. I love that. Love Kevin Long. Like, maybe this is just me, like, being obsessed with the 2015 Mets, and that's, like, one of my favorite teams ever, but Kevin Long, everywhere he goes, just great hitters. Always great hitters, and everyone always has the best things to say. Besides the Phillies last year. Besides the Phillies. Yeah, but those guys have no talent, so that's the difference. Um, but I mean, Schwarber's gotten better since he went to the Phillies. He's gotten to another level. I think Juan Soto loves him. Juan Soto loves him. I think that's a big thing. Uh, something that I've always heard about Kevin Long and like everyone who's seemed to work with him, especially left-handed hitters. He does an exceptional job with specifically he find like he's a big, and we've had Daniel Murphy on the podcast. Talk about this to hit the ball over. the outfielders hit it over the player's head. He wants you to drive the baseball. He wants you to find the power. That's how you become a productive hitter. And I think that that's something that hasn't necessarily always been what the Mets have been doing the last couple of years. And we did hear some little trickled comments about how Jeff Albert is now no longer with the organization. Also may not have been like the best communicator ever either. It seemed like he could have rubbed some guys the wrong way. So just getting someone that senior in the room, like Kevin Long seems like it'd be good. We also have to have a article from Will Salmon last week. I thought it was interesting. about the Mets expanding pro scouting department. That's good. A lot of the Baseball America guys, Kyle Glazer, J.J. Cooper, Matt Eddy, I've seen tweeting about recently how valuable pro scouting is. You guys have seen probably a lot of these graphics going out that the Rays, the Dodgers, and the Brewers have the three biggest pro scouting departments in all of baseball. I think there's a funny push and pull with pro scouting where people think it's like the old school money ball. Like, guy's got a good face. Where I think now it's kind of like, You let the data direct you to places, and then you let the scouts go there to see if the data's lying to you. Yeah, it's traits. You're looking for traits. You're looking for traits. You also want to look for feel. Remember when we went to the Fall League and everything about Marcus Luciano? Marco Luciano's data was incredible. Then we watched his shoulders slump and not get down on ground balls. That guy's an avid. I remember me and you watching Marco Luciano take on-deck swings and being like, I'm out. I have no interest in this guy. And granted, we were drooling over Sully Matias. Shout out Sully Matias. That guy hit the furthest ball I've ever seen. I love it also when we yapped at one of the scouts there, and he was like, who do you not like? Who do you like? And we mentioned Sully Matias. He was like, why do you like him? Did you see him hit that baseball? He hit one 490. It's the difference between professionals and you and I. But you and I, when we were 26 years old, very different men. Yes, very different. I do think that's something the Mets have a smaller pro scouting department as they beefed up other areas of the organization. I think it's something they definitely need. It's hard to hire that many new people every single cycle. The Mets have been hiring a lot of these other org people over the last few years. I also think it's a good bit of PR, too. Yes. You tell Joe from Massapequa the Mets are getting more in-person scouting. Like, hell, your organization is going back in the right direction. Of course, yeah. Realistically, what we're doing is just continuing to modernize the back end of the organization, which we still need to do. Mets should just hire us. Get a notebook. Go to games and just do this. Sit behind home plate and just write things down. Pop the radar gun. Get a radar gun out manually. It doesn't even work. Just optically, it's good. No, what we tell you, actually, no, this radar gun is taking velocity measurements like they did 30 years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the proper way. See, Mizorowski's not really throwing that hard. No, come on. These other guys, they're way harder. If people don't listen to the wind-up, World Series prediction. World Series prediction, what did I say? I said Brewers in seven, I think? Yeah, I said Rays in seven. Yeah, which is funny because I had the Rays jersey on, but Brewers in seven. It's also funny. I have now officially picked against the Brewers every series this postseason. That's good. Brewers fans that are listening to Mets stuff, you should be happy. Winning against me, but all we got. That's all we got. Thank you guys for watching. Make sure you subscribe to Mets stuff over here on YouTube. Listen to us, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google. Drop us a rating, drop us a review, download, and subscribe. You can follow James on social media at James Chiano. I'm Giraffe Nick Mark. We'll catch you guys on the next one. Peace out. Peace out, guys. Go Mets.
