What the Mets Should Do

They should go all-in on Yu Darvish, and then hope to use that signing to lure Ichiro Suzuki into okaying a trade to the Mets in exchange for Jason Bay. That's on the assumption that the team will be reasonably willing to try not to suck next year. Now sure, I know Ichiro has sucked this year, but a) there's significant evidence he ought to be playing better; b) he's the kind of player, in common with Jose Reyes, who ought to benefit rather than suffer from CitiField's spacious dimensions, and c) Jason Bay's kind of awful, too. Obviously the main point here is still Darvish, but I do think the lateral Ichiro-for-Bay move would be a benefit. Duda-Pagan-Suzuki is a better outfield than Bay-Pagan-Duda; obviously, substituting someone better for Duda or someone different for Pagan doesn't change that fact. And I like the idea of a lineup that starts Reyes-Suzuki-Wright-Davis. Plus, obviously, the Santana-Darvish-Niese-Dickey-Gee rotation would be sick.

Anyway, just a thought. They won't do it, but it would be cool.

Yu Darvish: Wait, Do I Actually Have To Root *For* The Yankees?

So, it continues to look like Yu Darvish, who is en route to posting his fifth consecutive full season in the Japanese baseball leagues with an ERA under 2, wishes to play in America next year. That probably means that he'll get his current team in the Japan Leagues to "post" him. At that point, MLB teams who are interested get to submit sealed, secret bids to that team, the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters, for the right to negotiate with Darvish, and the team with the highest bid wins those rights. They then get 30 days to negotiate a contract with him, and if no deal is signed he goes back to the Fighters (who could in theory post him again, if there's still time). Now, since I've heard of Darvish-san I've been rooting pretty damn hard for the Mets to get him, and with various of the Wilpons' legal troubles looking like they're being resolved in a positive way (for the Wilpons) that rooting is getting even stronger. But there is, as always, one major problem in such a plan: the Yankees.


The Mets are a reasonably big-market team, and if the legal troubles are resolved then they have about as much money as anyone. That means that, if they openly assess what the maximum amount they'd be willing to pay for the opportunity to talk to Darvish, the number they come up with has a decent chance of being high enough to win. Except, that is, for the fact that if the Yankees ever want to, they can just blow everyone else out of the water. So the question is, will the Yankees want him?