It's not that it's more or less important, but rather the context of each situation at those positions and understanding how they differ.

What Rosario and Conforto do or don't do should have no bearing on whether or not Gonzalez keeps his job, regardless of how similarly unproductive all three have been. Their situations are completely different with regards to age, development, and who is or isn't knocking on the door in Binghamton or Las Vegas at the positions in question.

Bruce is in Year 1 of a 3-year, $39M contract whereas Gonzalez is signed for league minimum. It's much easier to rid yourself of the latter by outright release than it is for ownership to eat $39M or find another team to take on that salary. Furthermore, here are no outfielders in Binghamton or Vegas worth calling up. Again, entirely different situations.

Frazier was worth 1.0 WAR before going down. The replacements haven't been good, but there's a difference between getting mediocre production from guys you weren't expecting to be starters vs. getting mediocre production from your actual starter. It's one thing to accept mediocrity from backups that you're only hoping don't kill you when forced to be starters, it's another to accept mediocrity from a guy who is your starter and is blocking two prospects that the organization would be wise to develop/find out what they have.



This may be true, but it really only matters if you think the Mets are a good team (they aren't) and can't afford to let a young player take his lumps during a playoff push. There is no need to get minimal value out of Gonzalez at the expense of developing Smith or Alonso when the Mets are the 4th best team in the division.


For all the barrelled baseballs, he's got a .250 average and barely cracking .400 in the slugging department.

I wonder what effect a reversal of their draft order would have on peoples perception of these two guys' upsides.

All of the above may or may not be true but teams rarely pull a player performing up to expectations to take a chance on a guy in AA, not while maintaining contending aspirations. Can the the situation change? Sure if they fall far out of things, then they would be more likely to give the playing time to either young guy. Likewise if AG stops hitting, that would also make a change likely.

Without some change in the circumstances, can you think of any precedent to pulling the veteran guy while they're still ostensibly fighting for a playoff spot?

Agree completely.

If the expectations for the Vet were low (hence Vet minimum) and if the prospect is performing as well as Alonso, I'd like to think a fair number of teams would.

Nevertheless, most teams are, by definition, run mediocrely (usually erring towards the risk averse). That's not what we should aspire to.

Other point was that "fixing" 1B if you want to call it that is sort of irrelevant if they continue to get nothing from Bruce and Scooter or some minimal consistency from Rosario. And of course they also need Fraz and Yo to get healthy and perform. So 1B looks like about 6th on the broken hierarchy to me.

At least Catcher appears to be fixed now and the rotation has been better recently so there may be some reasons to remain optimistic in the short run but they have to win games and the schedule is only getting tougher.

I like Mesoraco. He seems to be well prepAred every game. The bat has been okay as well, but I really like his game calling. Seems like a gritty gamer as well.

Well Bruce is out of the equation with Conforto, Ces, Nimmo and Alonso. So it's really just Conforto and Rosario there. And you can't expect too much offense from your 22 YO SS.

Conforto's inconsistency is a big problem though.

I'd like to see something like this in the second half:

Nimmo
Cabrera
Ces
Frazier
Conforto
Alonso
Mesoraco
P
Rosario

Jeesh. If this is the benchmark for AGon performing up to expectations, why did they even sign him?

Anyways, what you said is a fine summation of the situation and is absolutely what the Mets line of thinking is, I don't doubt that for a second. What I'm saying is that it is a terrible way to handle the 1B situation given that the team overall is not good, AGon individually is not good, and you have two guys worth checking out in Alonso and Smith.

It's not a matter of trying to get better production from Alonso or Smith than we're getting from AGon. I don't frankly care if they perform better in 2018 because I don't see this team as a threat to make the playoffs, so individual success/failure and what it means to overall team success is not a factor for me, or at least it is second to developing and seeing what we have in Alonso or Smith.

You're kinda making my point for me.

If 1B, where Gonzo has been worth about 0.2 WAR while posting a bleak .738 OPS (terrible for an everyday 1B ), is the 6th problem to address, doesn't that tell you that this team is not very good? And if they aren't very good, why not let Dom get the starts at 1B?

The team cannot give up on a playoff spot this early in the season. No team will do that. If Yo and Frazier come back and hit as expected then maybe they take a chance on Dom. But at the moment they can cut the third best hitter in the lineup, however may he doesn’t meet your expectations.

Gonzalez's OPS is under .600 if you look at everything but his three best games. He's been awful.