Should the Mets make a play for Vladimir Guerrero? Let's hope not:"This is a big post-season for Vlad, who is eligible for free agency this winter and could have used a defining post-season to help alleviate ever so slightly the always-present injury issues. Vlad will get a contract, but in this cautious marketplace it will likely be with a big-market team that can afford to cover any losses. Baseball people have felt for some time it’s a slam-dunk that he would end up with the New York Mets and their general manager Omar Minaya, but a combination of Minaya’s lack of job security, the Mets recent record of injuries to big-time players and concerns about how much money the Wilpon family lost in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme no longer make that a certainty. One agent told me in the summer that the best Vlad could hope for would be “to be somebody’s Plan B or Plan C.”
Just for the record, I would have loved it if Guerrero joined the Mets in 2004...but 2010 is a completely different story.
The author of this piece gives us several different reasons why the Mets might not go after Guerrero, but he mercifully fails to mention the most obvious one: defense. Guerrero has not played right field since July and has been the Angels primary DH for most of the season. Simply put, Guerrero is no longer an effective defensive player. There's no way that a hobbling, limping, and slowling moving Guerrero could cover any ground in the spacious Citi Field next season. Hell, Guerrero would be the new Gary Sheffield.
Aside from that obvious point, Guerrero is nothing more than a aging, declining, free swinging, injury prone, defensive liability at this point. Sure Guerrero is a big name, but he belongs nowhere near any National League roster unless he magically becomes 100% healthy.
(Note: I love how the author mentions the Madoff ponzi scheme as a reason why the Mets might not go after Guerrero. Laughable. The only way the "Madoff ponzi scheme" would have prevented the Mets from making a run is if Guerrero was in line for a huge Matt Holliday like contract. But at best, Guerrero should hope for a one year deal with a boatload of reachable incentives.)
Thoughts?
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