Sunday, December 4, 2011

Reyes Watch is Over

It is being reported now that the Miami Marlins and Jose Reyes have reached an agreement for 6 years and $106 million. Sandy Alderson, Mets GM, has acknowledged this evening that they could not compete with the Marlins latest offer. He also stated that they were not contemplating trading David Wright. With that said, Wright now becomes the longest tenured Met. It appears the by stating this Alderson is hoping to keep fan interest by retaining one of the two superstars on the team. However, there has been no talk of offering Wright an extension this off-season other than ideas posed by Met writers/bloggers.

It will be interesting to see what the Mets decide to do now as far as free agents are concerned. They are clearly in the market for a closer and it was even mentioned earlier that they may have reached out to Francisco Rodriquez's (K-Rod) people. Also it is thought that they will seek other arms for the bullpen. As the starting rotation goes it seems pretty set with Johan Santana, Mike Pelfrey, John Niese, RA Dickey, and Dillion Gee. However, with Pelfrey having a less than par year and the question of how Santana will be bounce back from injury there is also an option to seek another started for the rotation. It's unfortunate that Chris Capuano just signed a two year deal with the Dodgers. Perhaps the Mets could have retained them with the money they were reserving for Reyes. The other big question seems to be second base. It has been thought for awhile that if Reyes were to leave Ruben Tejada would take over at shortstop and Daniel Murphy would be the primary second baseman with Justin Turner filling in at time. However, there are a couple of problems with this lineup. Murphy has already had his knees injured twice while playing second base. Also, they have to have someone on the team that can back up shortstop which would mean that would be caring two middle infielders on the bench because Turner probably can't back up shortstop except occasionally. Also, Alderson has already said that Murphy was available for trade decisions so it will be interesting to see who opens up next spring at second base.

With Reyes departure it appears that the Mets organization got one of their many off-season questions answered, but definitely not the answer they wanted. But there are still many more questions that remain and hopefully with the biggest issue now closed the organization can move ahead with other matters.

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