by JPSchmack
The recent offensive woes of the Mets obviously coincides with the loss of Moises Alou and Shawn Green in the outfield, and the inability to bring up Lastings Milledge and Ben Johnson (briefly) due to injury. These injuries have forced the Mets to recall Carlos Gomez before the Mets wanted to, and then recall Johnson, only to see Endy Chavez go down with an injury. To add hurt to injury, Carlos Beltran is known to be playing through a health situation that needs attention, but due to the short-handed OF, he’s played through it.
Much has been made, in hindsight, of Omar Minaya’s decision to bring in the 41-year old and oft-injured Alou to the Mets outfield that featured the 34-year old Shawn Green. Here is the Mets Major League and Triple-A outfield depth and statistics, entering June 8th’s game at Detroit:
I’m entertained by the hindsight assessment that Omar was somehow misguided in assembling his outfield (i.e. “signing an old outfield”), when Omar also brought in Ambres and Johnson this offseason, and had young prospects like Milledge and Gomez in the system.Aside from Newhan the Mets have 11 OFs with an average of .282 or better in either MLB or AAA.
I think Omar has done a tremendous job of giving us organizational depth in the outfield.
Chalking the Mets offensive struggles up to Omar not being prepared, or signing an old outfield that is injury prone is completely unfair. No one can adaquately prepare for FOUR simultaneous OF injuries to your top seven outfielders
To illustrate this point, this the 2004 outfield depth Omar took over:
* – released or traded before Omar’s arrival
Players with these statistics would be competing for our fourth OF spot on a healthy 2007 Mets team.
Victor Diaz would be the only guy even considered for a ROSTER SPOT on our 2007 Zephyrs team.
The only logical conclusion from the lack of OF production for the Mets in the last three weeks is simply the bad luck and bad timing of injuries.
The Mets have been bitten by the injury bug in the outfield so much, that besides Alou, no one could have predicted such a long line would be headed to the DL.
This was Green’s first time on the DL ever in his career, while Milledge and Chavez have been mostly healthy throughout their careers.
They have been just unlucky with their rash of outfield injuries…that just can’t be helped.