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If the Mets don’t call Tim Tebow up now, when exactly do they call him up?
Whether they want to face it or not – and clearly, GM Sandy Alderson isn’t ready to – they are finished for this season, and the window for any future success with their current roster has slammed on their fingers.
Since beginning their season with a euphoria-inducing, but ultimately illusory, 11-1 record, the Mets have gone 20-38, losing by 10-8 to the Rockies in Colorado on Tuesday night. From being 3-1/2 games head of the NL East pack on April 13, they have plunged to 11 games back, and 7-1/2 games out of a wild-card spot.
Yoenis Cespedes, their highest-paid player, hasn’t played in more than a month, and no one can say when he will play again. Besides, he’s on record as saying the Mets are so bad, his presence might not make a difference anyway.
They’ve got a bunch of old guys either in their starting lineup – Todd Frazier, Jose Reyes, Jose Bautista and Asdrubal Cabrera – or on the disabled list (Jay Bruce), and virtually nothing to get excited about down on the farm.
The only real course of action for Alderson is to purge his roster, with the possible exception of Jacob deGrom, and stockpile as much young talent as he can for a renewed assault on success, which seems an alien concept in Flushing.
By Aug. 1, few of the men you see currently wearing Mets uniforms should still be receiving their mail, or their paychecks, at Citi Field.
So how do you keep the place from becoming a ghost town, or worse, a refuge for out-of-town fans, for the final two months of the season?
Easy. Call up Tebow.
Mets fans are used to kneeling and praying anyway. Why not Tebowing instead?
Because frankly, this season is precisely the reason the Mets signed Tebow in the first place.
Face it, Tebow may not be able to play much – he’s batting .239 with four home runs and a .690 OPS for the Binghamton Rumble Ponies in AA ball, which is two giant steps below the major leagues – but we know he can sell tickets. And jerseys. And hot dogs and beer.
And that is what the remainder of this Mets season is about, isn’t it?
Having Tebow on the payroll and not using him in Flushing is kind of like seeing a guy driving a convertible with the top up on a sunny, 80-degree day. I mean, if you don’t drop the top on that day, when exactly do you?
That’s the same question Mets fans should be asking about Tebow. He may not bring wins, but he’ll definitely create a buzz, at least for a week or so.
And who knows, he might be better than he’s shown so far.
Case in point: Last September, when the Mets were just as much out of the race as they are now, I was reporting a feature on a young outfielder named Brandon Nimmo, who hadn’t gotten a lot of playing time. In the course of reporting, I asked then-manager Terry Collins why, with the race being over and all, he didn’t use Nimmo more, if only to see what kind of player the Mets had?
Collins’s answer was dismissive: "Oh, we know what we got."
He didn’t say it like, "We know we got something good." Quite the contrary. He said it like I was an idiot for even asking the question.
Fast-forward to December, when Alderson was asked why the Mets didn’t make a play for Giancarlo Stanton, the reigning NL MVP whom new Boss Marlin Derek Jeter decided to unload for a sack of baseballs.
"Who needs Stanton?" Alderson said, tongue firmly in cheek. "We’ve got Nimmo."
It turns out that now, with Cespedes and Juan Lagares out and Michael Conforto struggling, the Mets are glad they have Nimmo, who is only the best hitter and most enthusiastic player on their team.
But it doesn’t say much for the talent evaluation skills of Alderson or the departed Collins that instead of recognizing Nimmo’s potential, they used him as a punchline.
Although I realize it is highly unlikely — the guy will be 31, after all, on Aug. 14 — they may have missed the boat on Tebow, too.
But even if they haven’t, what in the world have they got to lose?
A Mets rebuild in 2018 is not like the Yankees rebuild of 2016 because the Yankees had a stockpile of exciting young players in their system – Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Greg Bird – who were being blocked by the likes of Alex Rodriguez, Carlos Beltran and Mark Teixeira. The Yankees' fan base, notoriously impatient and believed to be dead set against rebuilding, was only too happy to see the old guys swept out in favor of the new.
The Yankees' success in 2017, and their dominance so far this season, has come as a bonus.
The Mets, alas, have no such immediate turn of fortune to look forward to. Their two best prospects, Amed Rosario and Dom Smith, are already here, and are wowing virtually no one.
And there is no one in their system that the fans are clamoring to see, unless you are eagerly awaiting the next big-league start by Chris Flexen.
No one, of course, besides Tebow.
He can’t be much worse than what they’re putting out there now. And for a while, anyway, he will be a whole lot better, in terms of fan interest. He will be the only reason, besides deGrom every five days, to go to the ballpark over the last 60 or so games of the season.
It’s Tebow Time. I know it, you know it. And soon, the Mets will know it, if they don’t already.
