R 2B ALTUVE, Jose 387 533 160 5.1 R SS PEÑA, Jeremy 289 426 101 4.8 L LF ALVAREZ, Yordan 406 613 187 6.8 R 3B BREGMAN, Alex 366 454 133 4.5 L RF TUCKER, Kyle 330 478 128 5.2 R 1B ABREU, Jose 378 446 133 4.2 L DH BRANTLEY, Michael 370 416 125 3.0 R CF McCORMICK, Chas 332 407 110 2.6 R C VASQUEZ, Christian 315 399 99 2.1 DEPTH If Brantley can swing a bat at DH, he doesn't need to worry about fielding and throwing with his shoulder.
Steve Cohen budget is around 300-350 million a year… every year. He might go over that sometimes. Of course what ever penalty is added on top, Cohen doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe he feels he’s helping baseball. “You should be able to build a pretty good team at $300 million,” he told The Post’s Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman on “The Show” podcast on Wednesday. “If you can’t do that, then that’s a problem.”
We don't want Alvarez playing LF for a vast majority of the season, so who else could fill in if we strictly go Brantley DH (which I'm totally fine with)?
Of course… if only we had the top payroll in baseball winning every season. The Mets have about a 1 year window with the current core. I have no idea if they have a decent farm or not but there’s a decent chance they start losing before they win a WS, and that’s usually the course correction that leads to owners starting to change their approach (or they fire their GM again).
We play Meyers in CF and move McCormick to LF in those RARE circumstances. If Leon is the super instead of Dubon, then he could do the same.
Maldy is in his final year. He was injured much of last year and played through it. Reading between the lines, it appears Dusty was more insistent on Maldy starting than Maldy was. And his reasoning was the timing of the acquisition. That should not be a problem if Vasquez starts the season here. However, reading between the lines is not my strong suit. I expect a split this year and Vasquez primary catcher in 2024.
I tend to think Dusty makes up his mind in preseason. He sticks with that plan no matter what. Theoretically, if that’s the case, there is no commitment to Maldonado yet.
