Mets miss out on another starter, and Starling Marte will play winter ball

Starling Marte struggled with the recovery from core muscle surgery in 2023, but is hopeful of a strong bounce back in 2024

What’s Up with the Mets? 🍎

• The Mets missed out on another starting pitcher - Lucas Giolito agreed to sign a two-year pillow deal with the Red Sox for $38 million (ESPN)

• Starling Marte is expected to start playing winter ball in the Dominican Republic soon (Athletic)

---

Rumor Mill 💨

• The Mets, Yankees and Blue Jays are showing interest in Gio Urshela (Athletic, SportsNet)

---

---

Still waiting… ✍️

First off, Happy New Year to all of you. This is the first Just Mets newsletter of 2024 and as always, thank you for reading, thank you for being a part of what we do and talk about everyday. I myself truly enjoy the engagement here, on Facebook and on X or Twitter or whatever you’re calling it these days.

I wish we had more fun things to talk about of course, but alas, I am not in charge of the Mets.

Anyway, the Mets missed out on Lucas Giolito this past weekend as he reportedly signed a two-year pillow deal with the Red Sox. They also missed on Frankie Montas, who signed a one-year deal with the Reds.

I would expect this negotiation ended when the Red Sox offered what should be a reasonably attainable second year situation (it’s pretty complex between the player option or the club option) in this deal for Giolito. The Mets are clearly on a path of flexibility for 2025 and don’t seem interested in signing pitching that spans beyond 2024.

I suppose that’s fine, but that limits what they’re able to do in terms of a hint of quality this off-season. Any pitcher who is happy with a one-year deal is coming off injury, under-performance or both, and those issues often span more than just the previous season. Players typically want the security of two years in a contract or at least an opportunity to trigger a second year in the contract if they’re healthy.

As for Montas, he has some exciting upside given his track record but his shoulder was a mess in 2023, and pitchers on the wrong side of 30 with shoulder problems can be very murky. But, he was great with the A’s in 2022 before coming to the Yankees and if the shoulder is healthy, $15 million could be the bargain of the winter in free agency this year. The Reds are a good place for Montas to go and try for a rebound, and that’s also a good young team for him to join as they look to take a step forward in contention in 2024.

The one-year scenario with Montas was certainly up the Mets alley. There was never really a link between the two this winter which I found interesting considering the Mets were willing to take a flier on Luis Severino and his balky injury situation.

Look - neither Montas or Giolito were likely to come to the Mets as the saviors for this pitching staff anyway. That’s not the point.

The point is, at the beginning of the off-season, David Stearns seemed to put an exclamation point on the amount of pitching the Mets needed heading into 2024 and, aside from Severino and Adrian Houser, the Mets haven’t done a whole lot at the major league level to-date. And what worries me is there isn’t a whole lot left as far as options go on the free agent market and they’ve expressed a general unwillingness to trade prospects to get what they need (although they did trade a marginal prospect to get Houser and Tyrone Taylor).

So, we are still waiting to see what Stearns and co. do with the rest of the rotation, that which needs far more certainty and quality than it has. We are still waiting to see what Stearns and co. do with the bullpen, which resembles the assembly of a 15 year old used car with parts from about 20 different junk heaps and a coat of paint (Edwin Díaz).

Then there’s the rest of the roster, which honestly seems like easy street compared to the rotation. They still need a major league alternative at third base and they still need a designated hitter, two of their weakest positions in 2023. The DH problem might be a little easier for them to solve if they sign one of JD Martínez or Justin Turner but in both cases, the Mets might need to consider going beyond the one-year mark in a contract after the production both provided in 2023.

And quite frankly, they should be ok with doing that if their role is going to be strictly as a DH.

The thing is, we have talked so much about what the Mets should do here and there, and their off-season has instead resembled that of the 2011 and 2012 winters, that which included mostly minor league and back-of-the-roster procurements. But this is what clubs who are aiming for 2-3 years down the line do. They sign a bunch of if’s and maybe’s, hope they catch lightening in a bottle with one or two of them, and aim to be “competitive” rather than “contenders” in the year ahead.

I’ve seen this movie before with this club and whether I like it or not, this is the strategy the Mets are taking. My expectations for 2024 are low and the path they’re taking to construct this roster are merely reinforcing those expectations. No matter what they say, what they might have you believe or what they deny both Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer said last summer, 2024 is unquestionably a punt to 2025 or perhaps 2026. The problem is, they’ve done their typically good job of blurring the lines on what 2024 is supposed to be to the public.

As such, the Mets need to do a better job distinguishing what they mean by the word competitive because in professional sports, the word “competitive” has a vastly different meaning than the word “contenders.”

I also think they need to take steps towards being more “competitive” as well.

---

Hot Stove 🔥

• The Braves acquired Chris Sale and cash from the Red Sox in exchange for Vaughn Grissom

• Wander Franco has been arrested in the Dominican Republic on charges he had an inappropriate relationship with a minor (ESPN)

• The Blue Jays are showing strong interest in signing Joe Peterson (SportsNet)

• The Angels agreed to a major league deal with Zach Plesac (FanSided)

• Frankie Montas and the Reds agreed to a one-year deal between $15-16 million (New York Post)