There’s a lot of buzz stemming out of Chicago as of late regarding the White Sox interest in Manny Ramirez. He’s been placed on waivers by his current team the Dodgers, and as long as everybody in the entire National League, as well as the other AL teams who have lower win percentages than the ChiSox pass on claiming him – which is like receiving exclusive trade rights so to speak – Manny will likely end up playing the year out on the South Side. Now with the way things have been going in Flushing nowadays, would it kill the Mets to try and pry Ramirez away from LA to play for them during the season’s final month, as long the Dodgers’ return is a reasonable one?
A number of factors play into this decision, and the biggest one by far is the lack of offense. We’ve picked up a little bit over the past few days, but still there’s certainly been a deficiency of the bats over the most recent number of weeks. The last 4 Mets losses have all been by just 1 run. Just a tad more run support and we’ve got ourselves a plump win streak. The Mets aren’t that far out of the Wild Card race – 7 games behind the leading Giants, with 5 teams sandwiched in between. The next team behind us is the Brewers, and they’re 11 1/2 games out. Double digits at this point equals death, so the Mets are probably the team closest to postseason contention – albeit a longshot – who will have a shot at claiming Manny! Why not go for it?!
Having the dead bats of Ruben Tejada, Luis Castillo, and Jeff Francoeur are killing us, and for a team that still has slim postseason hopes, any upgrades we can get will be more then welcome. 2nd base has been a weak spot all year long, and it doesn’t look like there’s any way the Mets can upgrade there. But as far as the outfield? Manny’s right there if we want him! If we do acquire him, Pagan will slide over to rightfield, leaving Ramirez to patrol left. Basically, a swap of Francoeur for Manny. Now I know, believe me I do, that defensively we’ll be taking a massive hit here. Francoeur’s UZR/150 clocks in at -0.1, where Ramirez’s is a ghastly -19.1. He’s never been able to field, I get that, but who on the roster could give us the kind of production Manny would with his .920 OPS? Chris Carter? Jesus Feliciano? Please. The Mets are losing too many games lately that they should be winning. The offensive ceilings of Francoeur, Carter, and Feliciano don’t come anywhere near the one Ramirez will provide us with. Sure it’s a sacrifice defensively, but right now I think the Mets are at that desperation point where it seriously wouldn’t kill them to take a risk on Ramirez.
There are also some intangibles that Manny would bring along to New York. One being of course more interest. You telling me more people wouldn’t buy tickets/tune into SNY to see Manny play for the Mets? Exposure is another one, with the Mets stealing the spotlight away from the Yankees, who are having a killer season and outshining the Mets in the process. At the very least he would make the final weeks of the season interesting and entertaining with his goofy antics. I can just see the crowd’s standing ovation to him when he comes to bat his first time at Citi Field as a Met. Also with the money the Mets have saved while Francisco Rodriguez has been on the disqualified list, why not use that cash to fix something that hasn’t been excellent in a while? The pitching for us is there, Ramirez would upgrade the offense big time, an offense that has started to show the signs of life it had earlier on the season. Why not make it even better? A month long rental of Manny Ramirez for the New York Mets? What’s to lose?
