Baseball Musings: Mo Comparisons

December 16, 2004

Mo Comparisons

With the Mets signing Pedro Martinez and the Mariners signing Richie Sexson, Mo Vaughn comparisons are coming to mind. Jayson Stark puts it this way.

The Red Sox were never going to guarantee this man four years. They weren't particularly excited about guaranteeing him three years.
They know -- everybody knows -- Martinez has a tear in his labrum that's practically as wide as the San Andreas Fault. One informed estimate put that tear as 90 percent full.

So there is a stupendous chance that one of these days, Pedro will go from being Omar Minaya's most famous acquisition straight to being the Mets' next Mo Vaughn.

Minus the insurance, that is.

And that's an important point. Pedro passed his physical yesterday and did have an MRI. Will that be good enough to get the Mets a policy?

Of course, the person who started the whole Mo fiasco was none other than Bill Bavasi.

But Bavasi landed his other target, Red Sox first baseman Mo Vaughn. Bavasi impressed Vaughn with a letter written personally, imploring Vaughn to pick up his East Coast roots and move west. And it didn't hurt that Bavasi offered Vaughn $80 million over six years. Vaughn signed with the Angels, who believed they were in position to get over the top and reach the playoffs for the first time since 1986.
On opening night in 1999 a sellout crowd came to Anaheim's Edison Field to see Vaughn and the Angels play the Cleveland Indians. But in the top of the first inning, the second batter of the game, Omar Vizquel, hit a foul popup near the Indians' first-base dugout. Vaughn drifted over near the dugout, looking into the sky, then fell into the dugout, landing hard on his left ankle.

Vaughn shook it off and stayed in the game. But when he fell to the ground while batting later in the game, it was obvious the injury was worse that first imagined. Vaughn came out of the game and was diagnosed with a severe high-ankle sprain.

Bill gave a lot of money to another first baseman yesterday.

The Seattle Mariners added power to one of the weakest lineups in baseball Wednesday, agreeing to a $50 million, four-year contract with free agent first baseman Richie Sexson.

Sexson will be playing left field, meaning that the Mariners believe they can sign another first baseman, probably Delgado.

I don't like the Sexson deal for two reasons.

It's a lot of money for a 30 year old who has only two 20+ win shares seasons under his belt. Seattle is the worst hitters park in the AL. Sexson's number may not look so good there.

Sexson is a first baseman for a reason. You don't take a good outfielder and put him at first. You take someone who's not a good outfielder and put him at first to hide his defensive deficiencies.

So the Mariners are going to pay a lot of money to players in their 30's who are at the poor end of the defensive spectrum. They are forcing a square peg into a round hole. I suspect Sexson will wind up at DH, and $10 million a year is a lot of money for a DH.

Update: The Mets just had a new conference introducing Pedro. Omar Minaya said something interesting. He claims that Pedro's transcends wins and losses. That having Pedro sign with the Mets will make other players want to be Mets. He says he's already getting calls from free agents saying "I want to be a Met." He hopes that this will help him find the next Pedro.

That kid that we don't know about, that Pedro Martinez that you don't know about, I don't know about, okay, that might be in the marketplace down in the Dominican Republic or Venezuela. That kid's father, or that kid, you know what he wants to be today? He wants to be a Met.

Will the Mets have enough money to sign that youngster?

Posted by David Pinto at 10:48 AM | Free Agents | TrackBack (0)

Comments

The Mets should have enough money to sign just about anybody. As history demonstrates, when the Mets are doing well they can more than hold their own against the Yankees. In fact, until the mid-90's, it was they and not the Yankees who owned New York. Thus money should never be an excuse with this team.

I remain personally excited about this signing. There are risks, but it seems that the potential benefits outweigh the costs. We shall see.

Posted by: paul at December 16, 2004 12:10 PM

The Mets wont sign that youngster because they will find something wrong with him. It all started when the didnt draft Reggie Jackson.

Posted by: Ed Zipper at December 16, 2004 12:23 PM

If he's a pitcher, the Mets will sign him and he'll get hurt before he gets to the majors.

Seriously, combined with the ardent pursuit of Sosa, that's so revealing of Minaya's mindset: he wanted Pedro because he's Domincan. Of course, it's not a bad thing to have a GM who still thinks like a director of scouting, as long as he understands the other consequences.

I wouldn't compare Pedro to Mo - Mo is rapidly becoming to free agency what Vietnam is to war - I've been worrying more about Pedro being to the Mets what Gullett, Messersmith and (at best) Catfish were to the late 70s Yankees. Of course, the test is whether the Mets, like those Yankees, are willing to just keep spending if Pedro's arm falls off.

Posted by: Crank at December 16, 2004 01:14 PM

The Mets will find that youngster, sign him, take him all the way up to Tripple-A and then trade him for Victor Zambrano. Oh wait, they already did that (see Kazmir).

Posted by: Derek at December 16, 2004 01:22 PM

Can Jayson Stark write anything w/o hyperbole?

Posted by: Francis at December 16, 2004 02:19 PM

With regards to Pedro's tear... there was a baseball doctor of some sort on Boston sports radio last night (forget who, sorry) who was talking about this and explained his position.

1) You can't tell how bad a tear is without actually going in the shoulder; MRI's are open to interpretation. Doctors routinely disagree on the severity of these issues (cited a team out West who has 5 doctors examine each MRI and every time it was a 3-2 split diagnosis).

2) It doesn't matter if it's 10% or 90%; what matters is if it is symptomatic or asymptomatic. Pedro does not complain of popping or of the shoulder feeling as though it is being dislocated; this makes it asymptomatic and not as much of an issue as people would fear.

3) Of 38 pitchers who have had surgery for this type of thing, only 2 have come back to their original form... one no-name guy (I forget, sorry), who was not too good to begin with. And the other... Curt Schilling. So I guess this is why Pedro has chosen to not have the surgery for all these years.

Posted by: Mike at December 16, 2004 02:44 PM

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