When a baseball club signs a free agent, there's the expected pomp and hype and honeymoon period. Fans are frothing at the idea of the new guy belting a game-winning homer during a sweaty summer night.
That's assuming he can stay healthy long enough to reach the dog days. And with the Mets, such things are never assured.
Even by the hard-luck histories of our more forlorn sports franchises, the Mets seem snake-bitten. We have the medical madness around the Willie Randolph years. Even before then, Jose Reyes was griping about back and leg pain by the time he was old enough to drink. Most members of today's rotation - including Zach Wheeler, Steven Matz, and Jacob deGrom - have had Tommy John surgery. (Even back in 2016, an article from NJ.com listed eight Mets hurlers who had the same surgery.) And even the one stud who hasn't, Noah Syndergaard, has spent way too many weeks on the DL. Even someone as stone-hewn as Thor mysteriously tears a lat muscle.
The Mets also gave Yoenis Cespedes a fat deal, because they had to, and since then Cespedes has had his mail forwarded to the trainer's table.
So, naturally, the Mets sign Jed Lowrie, and already we're seeing the decay into the uniquely Mets M*A*S*H unit. After the new Met felt some tenderness behind his knee, an MRI revealed nothing of note. Yet instead of diving into the pool of spring training, we're now hearing that Lowrie hopes to be ready by Opening Day.
Granted, we're not talking about a purchase of Machado proportions. The Mets signed Lowrie, a former A's infielder, to a two-year, $20 million contract, which means Machado will make more in 2019 than Lowrie makes over the next two years. But Lowrie's last two seasons in Oakland were also his best, batting .272 with 37 total homers with an .804 OPS, mostly playing second base. So he is in Flushing as more than a filler.
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Usually, a team suffers from faulty pitching or bad bats or poor management. The Mets added a baleful cog to their woeful machinery: a sprawling list of doomsday injuries to disparate players.
Even before this century, the Mets were hamstrung by hobbled players. Before Y2K we had Generation K. Bill Pulsipher, Jason Isringhausen, and Paul Wilson were the next iteration of Seaver, Koosman, and Matlack, or if you go more modern, the next Gooden, Darling, and Fernandez. They were sure to be three pitching pillars, the foundation of the Mets' resurgence in the '90s.
The Mets broke the seal on the 1995 season with biblical hopes, yet all three young pitchers fell to pitching-related injuries within one year, with Isringhausen the only one able to reboot and restore his career, not as a starter, of course, but as a closer for the A's and Cardinals.
Maybe all this foul history stops with the new regime, under the strong moves and confident mien of rookie GM Brodie Van Wagenen. Maybe Jed Lowrie is just hitting some turbulence before he climbs to the high cotton clouds of spring, where he can cruise through the summer, and help his new club scratch out some wins. It's time for the Mets to morph from a hard-luck club to a hard club to beat. They just need their players on the diamond to make that happen.
Follow Jason on Twitter: @JasonKeidel
