A lot of the offseason hubbub so far has suggested that the Mets will pursue free-agent second basemen, assuming, of course, they can find a taker for Luis Castillo.
That’s fine, I suppose, though I wonder if signing Orlando Hudson to a multi-year deal would be more akin to repeating the Luis Castillo mistake than undoing it.
There’s also talk the Mets could pursue Chone Figgins partly because of his ability to play second base, but though Figgins is a tremendous defensive third baseman, he hasn’t played more than nine games at second in a season since 2005 and even back then, in a small sample, he wasn’t overwhelmingly good at it.
And paying Figgins the rate he deserves as a Gold Glove-caliber third baseman just to move him to a corner outfield position, where his bat would be below-average, would be a blisteringly bad decision. He’s a good player, but a lot of his value is wrapped up in his versatility and strong defense at third. Planting him in left field absorbs most of that value.
The most baffling thing, I think, is that I have yet to see a single journalist link the Mets to Felipe Lopez. Maybe I’m missing something, but Lopez was actually better than Hudson this year and is two and a half years younger.
He’s been inconsistent across his career, which could scare the Mets off, but his only really terrible year at the plate came in 2007, when his BABIP was .036 below his career average. That means he was probably a bit unlucky.
I’m not advocating Lopez for the Mets, I’m just noting how surprising it is that his name hasn’t come up. If they actually can part with Castillo and Lopez’s demands are lower than Hudson’s, he seems — on the surface, at least — like a smarter pickup.
Tedquarters 