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Hello fellow Mets fans, and welcome to this week’s edition of Almost A Met!

I know this season has been… a pretty major bummer. But I’ll be honest, yesterday morning I had a random urge to go to a game soon. I’m eying some cheap seats this weekend. We’ll see what happens. What can I say, I just wanna spend time at the ballpark (especially with the lockout very much looming).

Speaking of the obviously impending lockout, do we have any Halo fans out there? I realized that this joke works for what I’m assuming is a small subset of fans like me who both love Halo games and the Mets.

Anyway, enough from me. Let’s take a look at how the Mets tried to “Lowe ball” SP Derek Lowe.

Andrew Wyrich

The Mets and Derek Lowe seemed like a perfect match… so of course they tried to pinch pennies

The 2007 Mets really could have used another starting pitcher. The team finished the season with a 88-74 record, and infamously collapsed at the end of the regular season to miss the playoffs. We all know what happened, I won’t belabor the point.

However, when 26-year-old John Maine is your best starter with a 2.6 WAR and 41-year-old Tom Glavine is your ace, it feels pretty obvious that you need to fortify the rest of the rotation.

To GM Omar Minaya’s credit, he went out and got the best pitcher he could. In January 2008, he orchestrated a trade with the Minnesota Twins that sent four prospects — including OF Carlos Gomez — to the Minnesota Twins to acquire ace SP Johan Santana.

Santana was great. But the work wasn’t done. The 2008 Mets suffered the same problem. They let Glavine return to Atlanta (good riddance) but relied on a rotation that was headed by Santana and filled out by the likes of SP Mike Pelfrey, SP Oliver Perez, Maine, and the ghost of SP Pedro Martinez.

After two years, it was clear they needed another pitcher to anchor the rotation. Luckily, one with a pretty intriguing track record was hitting the free agent market.

SP Derek Lowe, a 35-year-old with a history of very solid seasons and postseason success, was available. From 1997 through 2008, he’d accumulated a 31.8 WAR, won 126 games, and had an ERA of 3.75. He’d made 30+ starts for 7 years in a row, and had just wrapped up a 2008 season where he had 4.5 WAR, won 14 games, and had a 3.24 ERA.

On paper, he was exactly what the Mets needed: A reliable, durable, No. 2 starter to help the team’s rotation.

Inside the Mets negotiations with Derek Lowe

The Mets seemed to agree. Lowe was the right fit in the market. Joel Sherman of the New York Post reported in October 2008 that the Mets planned on “targeting” Lowe in free agency (along with RP Brian Fuentes, as we’ve covered in this newsletter).

However, just because he seemed like the right fit didn’t mean it would be a done deal.

In late November 2008, the Mets were looking at Lowe to replace Perez in their rotation. However, his market seemed to be bigger than they initially anticipated.

John Harper of the New York Daily News reported that the rest of the league’s interest in the pitcher was “forcing them to rethink” their plan of signing him. Lowe’s agent, Scott Boras, was saying the pitcher was looking for a five-year deal for around $15-16 million annually.

Instead, Harper reported, the team was considering looking at cheaper options like SP Jon Garland or SP Javier Vazquez.

“Eventually we might have to move on to the next level,” one Mets source told the Daily News at the time.

Meanwhile, Sherman at the Post reported that the Mets were hoping that the market would play out in a way that the pitcher’s “price could fall just enough” to allow the team to become “active participants” in the bidding process.

Despite all that, the Mets kept pushing.

In late December 2008, Yahoo’s Gordon Edes reportedly said the Amazin’s were deep in negotiations with Lowe.

About a week later, the New York Times reported that the team had made him a 3-year $36 million offer. In fact, he was the “priority” over Perez, both of whom were represented by Boras.

That offer represented the Mets holding firm. They only wanted to offer Lowe a three-year contract, while he was looking for five. That appeared to be the biggest hurdle in negotiations, along with other teams like the Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Phillies also expressing interest in the starter.

The Times noted that the Mets were also making more contingency plans, like pursuing SP Randy Wolf. The New York Post at the time reported that the Mets would make offers to “at least two” of Lowe, Perez, and Wolf. They also noted that the Amazin’s were only expected to sign just one of the three pitchers.

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The Mets kept playing ‘Lowe ball’ with Derek Lowe

As negotiations continued, the Mets and Lowe seemed to be a done deal. As the Daily News reported on the last day of 2008: “More and more it seems it will only be a matter of time before the Mets sign Derek Lowe, the starting pitcher they targeted going into the offseason.”

In fact, the Daily News reported, Lowe told a friend with the Red Sox that he “thinks he’ll wind up as a Met” after their negotiations and contract offer.

That article’s headline? “Mets playing Lowe ball with Derek.” (Credit where credit is due, it’s a classic New York tabloid headline).

As the calendar turned to a new year, Lowe’s representatives met with Jeff Wilpon, Assistant GM John Ricco, and Minaya.

But things seemed to hit a snag.

In late December it was reported that the Lowe remained a “top priority” for the team, but any talk of a deal being imminent were “unfounded.”

Despite the earlier chatter, it seemed Lowe was “hardly overwhelmed” by the teams’ 3-year $36 million offer, and he was “likely to continue shopping for a more desirable offer.”

The whole situation, according to Mike Puma of the New York Post, turned into a “protracted stare-down” between the Mets and Lowe.

As the offseason continued, talks between the two sides continued. On Jan. 7, 2009, the New York Post reported that Boras would have lunch with Minaya to discuss Lowe and Perez. The paper also noted that the Mets initial 3-year deal was rejected by the starting pitcher and that the team was “resistant to increase” their offer.

About a week later, everything changed. Lowe decided to sign with Atlanta after they added a fourth year into a $60 million deal.

“He was one of a group of pitchers that we’ve been looking into to fill a starting spot, but we’ve also felt that there are other guys out there who we like,” Minaya said, according to the New York Times. “We’ll regroup and move on.”

They moved on alright — to one of the most notorious deals of that era of Mets baseball.

What happened next?

In early February 2009, the Mets agreed to a deal with Perez that was the exact same offer they made to Lowe: 3-years $36 million.

We all know it was a disaster. In 2009 and 2010, Perez would be dreadful with the Mets, pitching to a 6.82 ERA in the first year of his new contract and a 6.80 ERA in the second year. In both years, he had an identical -1.2 WAR for the team. He, like 2B Luis Castillo before him, would become a symbol of the team’s rapid decline into irrelevance.

(Perez would make a comeback a few years later and pitch pretty well as a relief pitcher for a few years in Seattle and Arizona, for what it’s worth).

As for Lowe, it shouldn’t come as much of a shock that the 35-year-old showed signs of decline pretty quickly with Atlanta.

In his first year, he’d finish the season with a 4.67 ERA but still pitch in 34 games. He’d follow that up with a pretty solid 2010 season, winning 16 games and sporting a 4.00 ERA over 33 games. He’d have a rough 2011, losing a league-leading 17 games with a 5.05 ERA. He’d finish his career bouncing around between Cleveland, the Yankees, and Texas Rangers.

So while Lowe was nothing like he was with the Red Sox and Dodgers earlier in his career, he was certainly better than Perez was in orange and blue.

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