Though Day 3 of the GM meetings brought rumors of the New York Mets kicking the chemically-enhanced tires of Jhonny Peralta and Nelson Cruz, agent Scott Boras — mindful of the Amazins’ recent austerity, told a gaggle of reporters the quickest path to contention is to, well, enrich his clients. From NESN.com’s Anna Fogel :
“The Mets are like NASA,” Boras said. “They have big rockets, a lot of platforms and very few astronauts. Astronauts are hard to find. They’ve got one guy with the ‘Wright’ stuff, that’s for sure. And they’ve got a lot of Arm-strongs, too. But they’re certainly a club that I’m sure that’s in pursuit of a higher level of talent.”
Fearing that the Mets are investing too much energy into their cornerstone, David Wright, as well as their young pitchers such as his client Matt Harvey and Zack Wheeler, Boras advocated for franchises to spend the big bucks on free agents — something New York can’t afford to do as they continue to recover from the fortune that owner Fred Wilpon lost in the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme. “
I think the ability to spend and actually spending are two different things. And that’s only for the Mets to diagnose,” Boras said. “Certainly their franchise value has gone through the roof — they’re well over $2 billion. They’re a very successfully run business operation. The Mets have the ability to do pretty much what they want to do. But it’s hard to find astronauts.”
Of the Cubs’ willingness to revamp Wrigley Field while cutting payroll, Boras sneered, “fans don’t come to see seats, grass, cement. They come to see players,” thought that really depends on the seats, grass and cement, doesn’t it?