I was going to write a whole SNY.tv column about something, then Joel Sherman sort of scooped me. In today’s Post, he writes:
And, poof, they suddenly were acknowledging making an offer yesterday to Jason Bay.
Ticket sales are lagging and fans are screaming for the Mets to make a meaningful acquisition.
That’s a bit more cynical than the angle I was going to take, but the point is similar: We spend a ton of time weighing in on and reacting to reports from anonymous sources, but we almost never consider the motivations of anonymous sources.
Yesterday, after the Yankees had acquired Curtis Granderson, when Mets fans were starting to get impatient, after Scott Boras essentially called the Mets out in public, someone leaked word to Mike Francesa that an offer had been extended to Jason Bay.
Mike Francesa! You don’t leak information to Mike Francesa as a gesture of goodwill or good faith to a reporter who covers the team in good conscience every day, you leak information to Mike Francesa because it’s easier than standing on top of the Empire State Building shouting it into a 50-million watt megaphone while Twittering it into a Blackberry synchronized with a team of skywriting biplanes and the Goodyear blimp.
For whatever reason, the Mets desperately wanted us to know that they made an offer to Jason Bay.
I can think of a few possible explanations:
They really want Bay. Occam’s razor, right? The simplest explanation is often the best. The Mets could really believe that Bay’s power will play at Citi Field or that he’ll be a better value than Holliday, and so they are legitimately pursuing him and want their anxious fanbase to know it.
What Sherman says. By all accounts, ticket sales are slow. The Daily News has fueled a ton of paranoia that the Mets will not spend much money this offseason, so it could be that the team is extending offers to show fans that it is, indeed, willing to spend to improve this year. Bay pretty clearly is not going to accept the four-year, $65 million deal, since it’s only nominally larger than the one he was reportedly offered by the Red Sox, so it could very well be just for appearances.
They really want Holliday. If the deal is disingenuous, as Sherman seems to suggest, it could just as easily be an attempt to leverage perceived interest in Bay to drive down Matt Holliday’s price tag. I have no idea that that’s the case, and that’s probably wishful thinking on my part since I think Holliday’s a better fit, plus I think Scott Boras is probably too smart for that to work, but you never know.
Anyway as I’m writing this about six other blog posts have come out on the Internet wondering exactly the same thing about the motiviations, so apparently it’s not nearly as brilliant a realization as I initially assumed. Carry on.
Tedquarters 
I just think the idea that somehow and offer is going to boost ticket sales is stupid. Do you think anyone is going to run out to buy tickets because the Mets made an offer? No, they will buy tickets when the guy is signed, even the Mets are not that dumb.
I am still in the belief that the Mets want Holliday but they can’t afford to wait. And they definitely can’t have the Sox in the bidding either. By bidding on Bay at an offer similiar to the Sox, I believe they are hoping to force the Sox hand and have them take Bay off the board so they can start bidding against the Cards for Holliday. That would also set Hollidays market value since we all figure he will get about 2 mill more a year than Bay. Bay settles at 15.25 with the Sox. Holliday at around 17 mill a year. Mets can handle that. Not so sure the Cards can.
Also ted, do you think the media itself here is trying to pat itself on theback. I mean most of this so called ‘pressure’ on the Mets do make moves is fuled by the media, who fuel the ignorant fans.
How better to make itself look good than to convince fans that the media itself, now has the power to influence what the Mets do.
I really think this is just an example of the media constantly searching for a story. Two days ago, the beat writers were asking “Why are the Mets so inactive on the free-agent/trade market?” Then the Mets make offers to Molina (who’ve they been eyeing for weeks) and Bay (which was a bit of a surprise), and the media questions the sincerity of the offers! It’s a lose-lose situation for the Mets.
I don’t doubt that the Mets were eager to publicize their offers in light of the media’s criticism and the fans’ general discontent, but that doesn’t mean that offers were insincere. In fact, I hope the Mets ‘ FO isn’t stupid enough to risk committing $65 million to a player they have no interest in acquiring solely for the sake of appearances.
This has nothing to do with what you wrote, but in that picture, Francesa looks frighteningly like the Fabulous Sports Babe (for those that remember the early days of ESPN2).
Fans start screaming that the Mets aren’t making any deals. Then when word gets out, the same fans start screaming that they only made the offer to keep them from screaming. It’s always “The Mets need to do something! Anything!” one day and “Why did they do that?’ the next.
This, as they say.