Soriano refuses to play outfield for Nationals

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

Well, the Mets did acquire a catcher in a deal whom they then signed to a longterm contract, knowing full well he would be in his mid-thirties before the contract was up. When he lost the skills needed to play catcher, the view around here was that they would be wise to wait until he felt like moving off catcher. I suggested that Howe simply write "PIAZZA 1B" in the lineup, tell him to try the position for a while, and see what he does. The response I got was less than fully supportive. Outcries of "Suspend the selfish prick" "Show him who calls the shots," "How dare he dictate where he'll play, for the salary he's getting?" etc. were far less common than Soriano seems to be getting. Wonder why? I don't, not really.

[Elster88]

Tell it again, Grandpa!

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

Yeah, I do repeat myself a lot. Why, I've been going on about the analogy of Piazza to Soriano for--I dunno, must be years by now.

[Elster88]

Yes, you have been going on about Piazza and his resistance to moving to first everytime the topic of greed or legacies or any other (sometimes seemingly unrelated) topic comes up.

But from your last post I guess you think you are breaking new ground because this time you are making the analogy to Soriano's recent ordeal?

[Elster88]

OTOH, I intend to blast the Mets for the non-signing of Guerrero for the next five years.

Especially because I was assured that was the only after five years could the non-move be evaluated, due to his "bad back".

[Guest Rotblatt]

Bret Sabermetric wrote: Well, the Mets did acquire a catcher in a deal whom they then signed to a longterm contract, knowing full well he would be in his mid-thirties before the contract was up. When he lost the skills needed to play catcher, the view around here was that they would be wise to wait until he felt like moving off catcher. I suggested that Howe simply write "PIAZZA 1B" in the lineup, tell him to try the position for a while, and see what he does.

Our front office STILL looks better than Washington's. Unless I've been reading you wrong all these years, you don't necessarily think the SIGNING of Piazza was a bad move, but that our subsequent handling of him during his decline years was poor.

In Soriano's case, trading for him was, frankly, retarded.

And I agree with you that Robinson/management looks better here in dealing with Soriano than Howe/management did during the "Piazza to 1B" debacle.

Of course, Washington also has a lot more at stake, since they've gotten zero value from Soriano and traded a good player for him. Him not playing at all would have been a disaster for them.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

Another distinction is that the Mets didn't have a great (or even very good) alternative catcher that Piazza was getting in the way of. So I don't know that his selfishness was as harmful as Soriano's would have been had he stuck to it.

But yes, Piazza was selfish. The thing to do would have been to embrace (or at least accept) the move to first base. It could have prolonged his career, or made him more productive over the course of his contract. Even without a hot-shot young catcher, the Mets had reason to want Piazza to be in the best possible shape for the full seven years.

[nymr83]

The difference between Piazza and Soriano is that Piazza never refused to honor his contract, he might have said no behind closed doors or suggested he didn't like the idea to the media but that is his right. He never refused to take the field when the Mets wrote "Piazza 1B" on the lineup card.
Would he have refused if the Mets had called him on it the way the Nationals did to Soriano? We can't say for certain, but I'd likely to believe he'd have taken the field and saved his complaining for after the game.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

Yeah, but saying he doesn't want them to write PIAZZA 1B is a good way to ensure that it doesn't happen. And it didn't, until he finally and reluctantly agreed to it.

In other words, Piazza had a chance to nip it in the bud, and Soriano didn't. (The Nationals weren't allowed to talk to Soriano until after they had completed the trade.)

[nymr83]

But there was nothing stopping the Mets from writing it in there if they wanted to, they just decided to let the player dictate to them rather than telling the player what to do

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

True. Push never came to shove.

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

Nymr83 wrote: they just decided to let the player dictate to them

Which is exactly why I'm much more fed up with the team than with the player. Piazza was just looking out for #1. Selfish, not team-oriented, egotistical, sure, but there's nothing in his contract that says he must be an admirable human being. But the team--they're supposed to be all about winning, and they turned out to be much more about CYA, pleasing their schmuckiest fans, avoiding risks, putting fannies in the seats this week, than they were in winning baseball games. To me, it's unforgivable to have caved like that.

I understand that's compeltely unproven that the Mets so much as asked him to switch positions. But I think it's so much worse if they HADN'T even asked that I have to believe they did ask, and were turned down. It's more than probable that they then reminded him, as the nats did Soriano, that technically they didn't need to ask, they could just write his name in at 1B and he'd have to play !B. I think he told them, "Try it." And they just backed off. If you think Robby and the Nats did well in showing Soriano the limit of his rights, then you have to think the Mets and Howe were complete wussies, which I do.

[Vic Sage]

what about the bizarre notion that the Mets were actually better off with Piazza behind the plate? Even in decline, even LAST YEAR, he was a better offensive catcher than most others. The Mets problem was that they couldn't find a solid offensive 1Bman, which is really shocking considering that its the easiest position to fill. If there was a good hitting catcher pushing Piazza, and he refused to make room, that would be another matter but there wasn't and he didn't.

In fact, his insistance in remaining a catcher was more to HIS detriment than to the team. If he had started splitting time at 1b much earlier in his career (before 30), he'd likely have extended his productive years, putting himself in line for one more big contract.

But then you'd have to replace his bat as a catcher (a huge dropoff) when he replaces the regular 1bman (likely to be less of an upgrade than the downgrade you get at catcher).

Moving him after he started to decline was too late, since all you get then is an average hitting 1bman and a below average catcher, rather than an above avg catcher and a below average 1bman.

Under those circumstances, why would they put a gun to his head to move? They asked, just to salvage some remaining value from his contract and because they didn't want to spend the big bux for another 1bman. He probably hemmed and hawwed enough for them to back off. When they demanded it, he did it. And what do you know, he was right... he sucked!

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

Because, as we're learning, there was no gun to his head needed. All they had to do was say "You're playing 1B tomorrow" and that ends the discussion.

Like I said, wussies.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

I agreePiazza kinda took his move without the right enthusiasm, and they were prolly overly careful about it.

What I don;t necessarily buy is whether the move was ever in the best interest of the team and prolly came as the result of caving -- to the media.

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

I never got the impression that the media thought this up and guaranteed success. It was a somewhat radical move--uprooting your superstar always is--but the Mets had hit hard times and were basically compiling a ton of excuses. "We're having a bad week/month/season/decade but if we stay the same, we'll start playing better soon.." Eventually they needed to accept, "No, we need to make some big changes." But that admission would have cost them face, and $$$$, and they'd rather stick with what they have and keep making excuses. "We battled." Well, maybe a little bit you battled, but mainly you bit donkey dong. I want my star player to be right out front, leading by example, embracing any changes that management wants to improve a bad situation. Even ideas that maybe were risky.

Maybe Soriano will suck in LF. Maybe he won't hit 25 HRs in DC. Maybe the best career move for him is to play a mediocre 2B in a hitter's park again. But DC and Robby are trying to improve their team, and I don't think many of us here are applauding Soriano's stance.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

As I recall it, Howe one afternoon got asked when Piazza would play 1B (a huge theme on 660 that summer since they were busy looking for a reason to be indignant about something) and probably sick of all the questions, he replied, instead of the company-line "We'll assess our options down the road yyybbb" said something offhanded like, "Maybe I will soon."

At that point they said, "When?" and practically checkmated the poor guy. He said, "Uh, I have plans to do it today," after which the reporters ambushed Piazza upon his arrival at the park and set off the whole stupid "why dincha ask me first?" thing.

At least, that's how I remember it. I recall it being a bigger issue than it ever needed to be: There was no compelling reason to do it at the time other than the shut up, and ultimately amuse, the guys covering the team, who btw, were all pretty quick to declare it a disaster.

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

That's pretty much how I remember it, too.

In a larger context, the media guys weren't jerking the Mets around as much as the Mets had been jerking them around for months, maybe years.

Q:Why isn't Piazza taking groundballs at firstbase now that it's September and the Mets are out of the race?

A: [meaningless doubletalk]

Q: Okay, Art, it's Spring Training. How come Piazza isn't working at first base a little bit?

A: [more deflective b.s.]

and so on. After a while, they start scheming up ways to trap Art in a contradiction or something. The Mets had years to think of an exit strategy to this Piazza/PR/media problem and they just let it stand for a long time. All they had to do, again, was tell Mike "Listen we want to give you time and all, but we have the right to put you in the lineup whenever we want to at !B, so you need to get your shit together, take some infield practice, work with Keith Hernandez, and be ready because you could read in the papers any day now that you're playing 1B tonight." They wussed out of that, and paid a high price. When Piazza started bellyaching about he wasnt properly consulted, they should have distributed to the press photocopies of the registered letter they'd sent Piazza six months ago telling him to get ready to start some games at first. Instead, he played them perfectly, and made Howe sound like a moron.

Which is not difficult.