TOM Glavine is the wrong player at the wrong time for the Mets, carrying the wrong price tag. Perhaps Fred Wilpon will realize that later today, by the time this whirlwind courtship is over, before easing any closer to what would be a terrible shotgun marriage.
If not, it begs the question how a fool and his money ever get acquainted in the first place.
There are times when an owner has to show off the width of his wallet and the depth of his nerve. This is not one of those times. Even if it didn’t feel as if Glavine was just allowing the Mets to occupy his attention until the Braves show him an appropriate amount of love, this would be the wrong avenue to pursue.
If the Mets were propped on prosperity’s doorstep, lacking only a pitcher at the top of the rotation to put them in play for a championship – or even a playoff berth – then Glavine would be a splendid fit. And it would trouble nobody that a man who will be 37 years old next Opening Day, who has already logged 3,345 innings on his left arm, would want a four-year commitment at $10-11 million a pop.
Good teams pay for the moment.
Bad ones pay forever.
And the Mets, right now, are as bad as we have in New York, in every way, sharing the stage with their orange-and-blue cousins, the Knicks, as lifeless testaments to the gross dividends that poor management, poor planning and underachieving players can yield.
Throwing good money after bad isn’t going to change that. Prying Glavine away from Atlanta isn’t going to change that. And unless Mike Piazza’s meeting yesterday with the Pope went better than anyone could have expected, seeking relief from a higher authority won’t change it either.
The culture that chokes this team won’t be solved every fifth day. It’s grown worse than that. Deeper than that. And if the Mets believe otherwise, they are dangerously delusional.
Two years ago, Wilpon refused to play chicken with Scott Boras, wound up forfeiting Alex Rodriguez without a fight. The Mets were defending league champions that winter, a very good team looking to take the final step toward great, riding a crest of momentum and good feeling. That was the moment to start spreading money around like Sinatra.
Now?
Glavine was a decidedly mediocre pitcher last year from the middle of June on, losing nine of 16 decisions, pitching to a 4.24 ERA and then getting drubbed by the Giants in the playoffs. Maybe that was a statistical aberration. Or maybe it’s a clue that handing Glavine a Met uniform would just be hiring a skinnier version of Mo Vaughn.
Perpetuating a Met fan’s persecution complex that goes something like this: If you put a Met uniform on Babe Ruth, he would instantly become Ruth Buzzi.
Even if Glavine does approximate the pitcher who is 242-141 with a 3.37 ERA across 16 big-league seasons, what does that secure for the Mets, exactly? Third place in the NL East? Second place? And don’t you think Glavine, a postseason regular since 1991, has thought about that, too?
The Mets would be much smarter to keep Steve Trachsel from defecting to the Diamondbacks, and adding Omar Daal, another free-agent lefty who is seven years younger and much more affordable than Glavine. Even Jamie Moyer, who is three years older than Glavine, makes more sense, since he would cost less money and demand fewer years, and his average season since 1996 (15-7, 3.84) isn’t appreciably worse than Glavine’s (17-9, 3.21).
There is a significant difference between where the Mets think they are and where everyone else knows they are. It is folly to bank on a teaser-sheet parlay of Vaughn, Jeromy Burnitz, Roger Cedeno and Roberto Alomar all enjoying complete reversals next season, which is only the beginning of what it would take to make them respectable.
Glavine would be window dressing for a broken window.
And that’s assuming he still has full command of his pitching powers.
The Mets can’t afford another winter chasing after shadows, trying to catch snippets of hope in the wind. True to their shared orange-and-blue pedigree, they continue to suffer for past sins, have few assets anyone else wants and are stuck with an expensive mess that only time will cure. Just like the Knicks.
There will come a time when the Mets will need Wilpon to flex his checking account, act like the brash New York owner he’s always wanted to be. Just not now. Wrong year. Wrong team. Wrong player.
