Today, Joel Sherman "perfect stormed" a story about how the Mets may lose Jose Reyes to free agency and will listen to offers on David Wright.
I tweeted, "If 2012 opens without Reyes or Wright, I might jump off a bridge."
Richard DeCicco responded with, "why we have stunk with them, I'm sure we can lose without them."
This is not the first time - or the last time - I will hear this argument. I'm sure many Mets fans out there have heard it too, or even suggested it themselves. But there's one giant flaw in that argument.
These guys were a huge part of the reason they won any games at all.
Sure, let's pull the guys with the .887 OPS (Wright) and .877 OPS (Reyes) out of the lineup. See how the team functions now. You have to remember that these are two of the best players in baseball at their positions. You will not be able to replace them with equal or greater players. Therefore, you lose production.
If you're losing production at two positions, how do you expect to win?
Grit? Tenacity? All those intangibles people love to talk about, always circling around David Eckstein?
Bull.
Wright and Reyes are arguably top 5 in baseball at their respective positions. The team won't land anyone above that in a deal, free agency, or trade. Maybe they can develop one in 3, 4, 5 years. But nothing is really on the horizon to take the place of these two currently.
So sure, they've lost with them. But they'd lose even more without them.
And no one wants to see that.
