On Why Joel Pineiro Isn't a New York Met

The Mets went into this past offseason with the intention of upgrading their pitching staff but came away deciding to stand pat with the five they had.

They justified it by saying that those same pitchers they currently had were all pitchers that had had success in Flushing in the past and that they would again in the future.

What really happened is that they didn’t want to go after John Lackey because they decided they only wanted to commit to one big contract during the winter. So after they decided to make outfielder Jason Bay their main target, there was little money left in their budget for Lackey.

Why the Mets didn’t make a bigger play for any other free-agent pitchers on the market remains a mystery. They said it was because they were unwilling to pay over market value for any pitcher, but quite a few pitchers signed deals that maybe weren’t the cheapest but certainly weren’t gross overpayments. Like, say, Joel Pineiro’s two-year, $16 million deal he signed with the Angels.

We know the Mets made an offer of at least $15 million over two years, but why didn’t they go just a bit further to make a deal happen?

Here’s Pineiro’s account via John Harper of the NY Daily News:

Pineiro said in November he considered the Mets to be “the front-runners” to sign him. Much of that feeling was based on what he was hearing from his friend and neighbor in Miami, Alex Cora, that the Mets had every intention of signing him.

Considering that Cora has a strong relationship with Minaya, suffice to say it was solid information.

“Alex was telling me (it was going to happen),” Pineiro said Wednesday. “I was like, ‘all right, I’m just waiting for that good thing to happen, and I’m ready to go.’

“But it never came.”

Pineiro indicated that the Mets stayed in contact with his agent throughout the winter, but didn’t make any real move to sign him until the Angels got involved in mid-January. Even then all indications are the Mets knew their two-year, $15 million offer wasn’t going to be enough, and at that point, it may well have been for the sake of appearance.

“Is it that the Mets wouldn’t go the extra mile?” I asked Pineiro.

“Exactly,” he said. “It was a business decision, I guess. They had their guys, already.”

The Mets, however, had a different story. Here is their side via Adam Rubin of ESPNNewYork:

Despite Angels pitcher Joel Pineiro claiming the Mets never made him an offer as a free agent this winter, Mets officials tell a far different story. Team officials have claimed for months that Pineiro wasn’t sincere in his interest in the club, in their estimation, and that the Mets were willing to meet or narrowly exceed the offers he received elsewhere.

Thoughts

So instead of getting an answer as to why Pineiro isn’t a Met, we get a lot of "he said, he said" BS. I guess we may never know the truth, but we know one truth—the Mets didn’t get it done. What a mistake it looks like now.

Unfortunately, the Mets should have known better. Not only did they have question marks with practically every starting pitcher on their staff, but they also have seen Pineiro at his best and saw how dominant he can be when he came to Flushing last June 23. That night Pineiro was brilliant, shutting down the Mets and holding them to just two hits over nine innings.

The Mets did touch him up for seven runs in five innings just over a month later, but if they were smart, they would have realized it was just one bad start during a season in which Pineiro won 15 games with an impressive 3.27 FIP and 1.14 WHIP.

Bottom line, whoever was at fault for not getting a deal done, it was a mistake on the Mets' end. Maybe, as they contend, he wasn’t serious enough, but there is nothing like some extra Benjamins to make someone serious.

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