35 Years of Misery & Counting
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Exercising that $8.5 million option could turn out to be the best move Sandy Alderson made this past offseason. And yes, I know it’s still early, but with just about the entire team, except Cabrera, struggling offensively, for April anyway, the little 2nd baseman has carried the load.
I liked Dave Eiland’s quote the best: “The game starts in the first inning, not the fourth.”
The pick-ins out there are pretty slim right now anyway. But what with an 11-1 start, my guess is that Thomas Nido and whoever backs him up can hold down the fort until Kevin Plawecki gets back in a couple of weeks or so. Of course, it’d be nice, with Travis d’Arnaud out for the season, if Plawecki could stay healthy for the rest of the year and take advantage of his opportunity to be a fulltime starting catcher, but with injuries you never know. Still, with the Mets hot start, as long as they keep winning, they can worry about who’s behind the plate later.
The guy’s a lifetime .290 hitter with 300-plus home runs and just drove in 90 runs during his last full season all the way back in 2016. Sandy Alderson got him on the cheap this off-season and at 35 years old, he should already be plenty motivated to prove that he still has some baseball left in him. Then too, when it comes to defense, his own manager has said that Gonzalez has been ‘amazing’. In other words, 5 games into the season and people need to calm down about the Mets current outfield jam and give Gonzalez a couple of months to prove himself, before begging Callaway to move Jay Bruce to 1st base just so Brandon Nimmo and Juan Lagares can play more.