The Mets have all sorts of problems heading into the July 31 non-waivers trade deadline.
Yoenis Cespedes’ somewhat romanticized daydream about where he would like to spend the final season of his career another half-dozen or so years down the line is not one of them.
We’re a strange lot, those of us who make a living writing about sports. We constantly decry athletes who spoon feed us daily pablum, yet the moment one deviates from the expected party line, we nail him (or her) to the metaphorical cross and demand a ritualistic recantation.
Surely it would have been more politically correct had Cespedes not told the San Francisco Chronicle’s estimable Susan Slusser before Friday’s game against the A’s that he would like to finish his career in Oakland, where he spent his first 2 ¹/₂ seasons in the big leagues, from 2012 up to the 2014 trade deadline, after defecting from Cuba.
It would have saved him and the Mets a dose of controversy that neither he nor the team particularly need, had he served up a heaping of sanitized platitudes, and especially since he entered Saturday’s game against his favorite team on a 78 at-bat homerless streak since last going deep in San Francisco on June 23.
Why, hadn’t Cespedes pledged loyalty for life to the Blue and Orange back in December when he signed his four-year, $110 million contract that stamped him as the highest-paid player in Mets history? You’re darn right he did.
But come on. This was nothing, certainly nothing even close to earning the round of condemnation he took in-game from the SNY telecast team of Gary Cohen, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez. Let’s stipulate that these three pros consistently make listening easy on the ears with an educational and entertaining style even when the Mets make watching hard on the eyes.
But they went over the top in roasting Cespedes and thereby helping to inflame a fan base that has lived through a discouraging season in which the left fielder has become a franchise lightning rod in the absence of Matt Harvey.
Suddenly, the magic and adulation his bat produced upon arrival from Detroit at the 2015 trade deadline seems a thing of the distant past.
If anyone had a right to be miffed over Cespedes’ comments, it was Mets manager Terry Collins, who learned that Oakland’s Bob Melvin is the favorite manager for whom No. 52 has played. Collins, after all, has steadfastly supported Cespedes through any and all issues, most notably last summer when the outfielder played golf while sidelined with a leg injury.
Ironically, Melvin was one of three finalist runners-up, with Chip Hale and Wally Backman, when Collins was hired to manage the Mets by then-incoming general manager Sandy Alderson in 2011.
But Collins stamped out all burgeoning brush fries, stating Saturday he had felt no need to discuss the matter with Cespedes, upon whom he heaped praise as “if not the top player, then one of the top-five players” in baseball.“If [Melvin] is his favorite manager, that doesn’t bother me a bit,” said Collins, somewhat secure in his own skin having managed 1,903 big league games. “I know where he stands.”
Collins also said he just wanted Cespedes “to keep hitting home runs,” which was a bit of a misnomer, but the fact is the left fielder has become more productive on the homestand, having gone 11-for-30 with three RBIs in seven games, including an opening 4-for-6 and Friday’s 3-for-4.
The Mets had won three straight but still stood 10 games out of a wild card entering Saturday. They had Zack Wheeler — who had allowed 21 earned runs on 31 hits in 18 ²/₃ innings over his previous five starts while throwing 394 pitches (21 per inning) — on the mound.
That represented one of many problems for Collins and the Mets, not one of which was Cespedes’ flight of fancy on Friday.