Thoughts on Rivera and Willingham
By Mike Silva ~ December 7th, 2009. Filed under: Offseason Speculation.
You all know I want Matt Holliday in the Mets lineup. Numerous times I have compared this offseason to 2004 when the Mets were coming off an embarrassing season and needed to jump into the free agent frenzy. They came away with Carlos Beltran to be the heart of their revamped lineup. Holliday wouldn’t be the heart of the 2010 Mets lineup, Beltran and Wright are, but he certainly would fill the power void left by the injured Carlos Delgado. It appears, however, the Mets are resigned to the fact they can’t play in the “deep end of the pool” and are going to give us more the winter of 2003 – which yielded such luminaries as Mike Cameron, Kaz Matsui, Karim Garcia, and Shane Spencer- by going after Juan Rivera and Josh Willingham.
Take Rivera, the more promising of the two, who is coming off a decent 2009 season (25, 88, .810 OPS). In 2006 he had a breakout age 27 season hitting .310 with 23 hrs, 85 RBI, and an OPS of .887. The next two years were full of disappointment as Rivera was plagued by injuries and poor production. He gets a bad rap on defense, but advanced metrics state that he isn’t all that bad. His contract is very affordable with two years and $10 million remaining. Rivera wouldn’t completely disappoint me, but it also depends on what is going back to Anaheim.
Josh Willingham is equally uninspiring. He is terrible defensively and a very streaky hitter. Sometimes he reminds me of another version of Pat Burrell without the lousy attitude. The good news for the Mets is that he is still young, under control, and inexpensive as he made only $3 million dollars last year.
Perhaps I am being a bit pessimistic about both these players. If healthy they should put up good power and an OPS around .800. Either player would have led the 2009 Mets in homeruns, although that isn’t saying much. What would make me accept Rivera or Willingham instead of Holliday? A huge effort by Omar Minaya and company to land John Lackey or Roy Halladay.
Willingham and Garcia isn’t Karim Garcia/Shane Spencer, but it certainly doesn’t excite like Carlos Beltran in 2004. Only Matt Holliday would do that.
