PORT ST. LUCIE – It looks to be a longshot that Paul Lo Duca will sign a new contract with the Mets prior to the season.
Lo Duca, the All-Star catcher, is going to be a free agent after this year, and last week, his agents, Jeff Kahn and Andrew Mongelluzzi, met with Omar Minaya in Port St. Lucie. Yesterday, the Mets GM said the team is unlikely to agree to a new deal with Lo Duca during spring training.
“The way it is right now,” Minaya said, “there’s no plan to extend him before the season.”
Minaya did say that “we’ll stay in contact,” and that “we’re definitely open to keep dialogue open with them.” But the GM also said, “Right now, we’d rather him to go out and play the whole year.”
Assuming the Mets want to bring Lo Duca back, Minaya believes the team will have an opportunity to do just that after the season. When Lo Duca first reported to camp, he did say he wants to remain a Met past 2007, saying on Feb. 15, “I’ve been vocal that I want to stay here and they know that and I think the people in New York know that. So I would love to stay here and I’ll leave it at that.
“I’m at the point now where I’m just concentrating on the season, and if it happens, it happens,” Lo Duca said yesterday when asked if he was optimistic. “I know there’s two sides to every story, obviously, and they know what I want and they’ve got needs too, so I understand where they’re coming from.”
Minaya said there weren’t any current plans to meet again with Lo Duca’s reps.
Lo Duca, who said yesterday “the meeting went well,” is slated to earn $6.25 million this year. He had a terrific first season with the Mets after coming over from Florida last winter, hitting .318 – sixth-best in the NL – and ranking second in hits for major league catchers (157, behind Oakland’s Jason Kendall). Defensively, Lo Duca caught 24 percent of the basestealers who tried to run on him last season.
He also has made the All-Star team four straight years and been a consistent hitter, batting at least .273 for six straight seasons and trailing only Kendall for the most hits by a catcher during that time.
Lo Duca, who will be 35 in April, also hasn’t been on the disabled list at all over the last five years. However, signing him now is perhaps an unnecessary risk. If the Mets don’t bring Lo Duca back, the potential free-agent backstops after the season will include Jorge Posada and Kendall.
Lo Duca, meanwhile, had a cortisone shot on Thursday to combat tendinitis in his right hand. He said yesterday morning before the team worked out that his hand was “doing fine.”
“I went out there and was planning on doing something and they sort of backed me off,” he said yesterday morning. “So today is full-go, so I’m going to go out there and see what I’ve got.”