Here Comes The Offer Flood

I went to bed last night with Evan Longoria having gotten a six-year, $100 million extension from the Tampa Bay Rays, a team not known for being able to keep players around for the long term. At that point, there was no excuse for the Mets to continue to silly around with this process. Whether its truth or perception, it isn’t a good look to have the Rays lock up a player who was nowhere near free agency, and at the same time have your organization, money problems or no money problems, dick around with the face of your franchise. I’d love for David Wright to be around for the long haul. But if he’s not, my hope would be for the Mets to do something with him, sooner rather than later. The last thing I wanted was the for the Mets do to the same thing with Wright as they did with Jose Reyes, which was nothing. Any outcome would have been better than letting Reyes go for nothing … whether it be a long term deal or trade. The fear for me is that there’s going to be nothing more than a report here and there, nothing with substance, until we get to spring training, at which point all bets would be off regarding Wright’s long term future with the Mets. (Not to mention keep the team in a Han Solo frozen in carbonite state regarding doing anything else significant to the roster.)

So I wake up this morning … and holy hell we have reports up the junction. First, 6 years at $100 million. Then another report at 7 years at more than $100 million. That fleshes out into 7 years at anywhere from $119 million to $129 million, or 8 years at $135 to $145 million. Then comes the speculation that this could get done this week.

I need to sit down.

I think it’s absolutely hysterical that just about 24 hours after the Longoria deal happens, everybody who’s anybody regarding the Mets and baseball are reporting on Wright numbers from their sources. Now don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t think that the Mets just started putting together offers Monday afternoon. But I do think it’s funny that this gets leaked the day after Longoria happens. And I realize that I come off as a conspiracy theorist here. But think about how much the Mets have based their decisions on fan reaction and public relations, and then tell me that it isn’t at least a little bit possible that the Mets organization intentionally floated this red herring.

Red herring or not, I hope this does lead to something significant. Preferably a press conference re-introducing David Wright as the face of the franchise until his retirement. If it leads to a rejection and a subsequent trade, so be it. It’s better than what seems to be the Mets usual course of action, which is to do nothing and then bemoan outside circumstances and convince us that they gave it the ol’ college try. So forgive me for being a pessimist until there’s a resolution. Though I will take this as a small step in the right direction. I’ll also take it as a reassurance that the Mets still have cash in the bank after trading some of it for Brandon Hicks.

Update: Sure enough, the next update that came out was this: “nothing is imminent” … from Seth Levinson. So my decision to remain a pessimist on this has turned out to be the correct move.