Okay, first off I gotta say this is going to be more of a rant than a full blown blog. But here goes…. It’s been almost two weeks now since the Mets GM Omar Minaya placed very reasonable offers on the table to aging free agent catcher Bengie Molina and outfielder (and future DH) Jason Bay. The Mets have offered 2 years at around 9 million a year to Molina. This is pretty reasonable offer to a 35 year old catcher who hit 20 homeruns and batted .265 last season and is quite possibly the third best fielding catcher in his family. Problem for Mets is Molina wants 3 years. Problem for Molina is nobody seems to be bidding against the Mets.
The Mets offered Bay a very nice contract for 4 years and 16 million dollars a year. This is good chunk of change for Bay, who may very well be one of the top 3 Canadian outfielders ever. Last year while playing half his games in the hitter friendly confines of Fenway park Bay hit a career high 36 homeruns. He has good power and a good bat in general. He would certainly be an upgrade for the Mets. Things is, Bay wants a 5 year contract. Which means he’ll be 36 at the end of the contract. This is not old in real people years by any means, but in terms of baseball outfielder years this is when players start to decline in the field. Truthfully, even at his fielding prime Bay was never considered anything other than average in the field. This is the reason why so far no other team has offered Bay 5 years. So the Mets have the best offers on the table to both Molina and Bay still the players wait and wait for a better offer.
The Mets already have a couple of bad contracts on the team (I’m looking you guys Oliver Perez and Luis Castillo.) They don’t need two more. Stick to your guns Omar! Don’t up the offers! Molina and Bay are both fine players but not worth putting the club in more of a hole (than the one they are in now) in the future.
