…in doing some research on Jose Reyes, i found this old post from Buster Olney, which i found intriguing…
In early June, in a post to his blog for ESPN.com, Olney wrote about the 26–year-old shortstop, while citing talent evaluators who doubt Reyes will ever be able to take his game to the ‘next level.’
In the end, Olney writes, “Rest assured, most teams would love to have Reyes… But, waiting for Reyes to develop into a superstar might turn out to be the Mets search for the great white whale; there’s a chance that it might never be satisfied. He might already be as good as he’s going to get.”
…reyes confuses me, too… when he’s on fire, and clicking, and smiling, and dancing, and the team’s winning, and he’s stealing bases and legging out triples, he’s the most exciting player in the game… in 2006, talk radio was bogged down in debate about whether reyes was the best shortstop in New York, he was on the cover of ESPN: The Magazine’s Playoff Preview… and so on… and yet, here we are, just two years later, he’s been out most all of this season with a mysterious hamstring injury, and i can’t help and wonder if he is what he is… is this as good as he’ll be… is he ‘that player,’ you know, the guy who shows signs of greatness, who i believe is a super star, but who then drifts in to struggle, then back to greatness, then back to struggle, all interspersed with the occasional injury, talk of immaturity and a magazine cover…
…for instance, i have a good feeling about what David Wright is all about… even despite his awkward season this year, i still have a good sense of what wright will deliver on a year-in and year-out basis… but, with jose, it would not shock me if he won the MVP next season, so much as it would not shock me to see him hit .250…
…in other words, i know jose can be great… my question is, will he be great… or, like olney says, will he end up being the team’s great white whale…
{ 29 comments }
i do hope that Jose has some good years ahead of him, he is incredible to watch, but his leg issues makes it hard for him to be reliable.
In fairness to him, he didn’t have one single leg issue in 2006, 2007, or 2008.
He had some minor things, but nothing that kept him shelved for more than a day or so at the time, like all players do during the season.
It just has not been the same without him in the lineup wreaking havoc on the bases, i think that has hurt them more than the lack of HR’s.
Olney’s quotes, and this post, confuse me.
First of all, most 26-year-olds who have been in the big leagues for 5 years or so, are entering their prime and about as good as they’re going to be. So anyone who expects Reyes to get much better is fooling themselves. But putting up the numbers he’s been putting up would be just fine with any rational fan. No one is expecting him to become Albert Pujols, as Olney implies.
Second, drop David Wright in the middle of the Dominican Republic at age 18, where he doesn’t speak the language or know anyone, and see if you still have “a good feeling about what he’s all about.”
agreed. very very strange post from Matt here… i don’t like where this is going
In Matt’s defense I think he is just trying to convey what we all have thought before, which is when is Jose Reyes going to have the game completely figured out?
Because while yes he has been awesome and “the most exciting player in baseball”, he has also left many met fans scratching their heads and has been guilty of not having his head in the game and prolonged slumps that keep him known as a great player, but not the player we all think he can be.
There is no issue with what he brings when fully healthy, but what he could put together if he eliminated those prolonged slumps and bad mental mistakes, combined with the fact that he is going to hit for more power is scary.
I think we have all thought we would eventually see an insane .340, .400OBP, 20 HR, 25 Triple, 90 RBI ,140 R, 60SB season for Jose, this post is essentially saying we may never see it….I disagree
Look, Reyes is what he is. Is he going to make stupid mental mistakes sometimes? Sure. So did Manny. Ask Red Sox fans how those two World Series turned out. I’ll live with mental mistakes from a star like Reyes. When it’s a bench guy like Pagan, not so much.
But it seems like some people here would rather have David Eckstein, a scrub who does things “the right way.”
What from that post gave you the impression that Id rather have David Eckstein??
Im saying Jose is a great player and we know we can expect him to be a great player.
But every met fan at the start of the season thinks this is the year he does what he does for an entire season, which would give him psychotic numbers.
Im not saying he isnt great and I wouldnt trade him for almost any single player in baseball because I love watching him so much. But it also is because I think that one day he will put up a season that weve never seen anything like before, because he truly has 5 tools in which he excels.
Will REYES be the next Jeter? I don’t think so, but, It is not the same without him. I have watched several plays that I said REYES would have made that. We need him back, and, at 100%
This post is absolutely bizarre. A quick check of his career stats in which he has had full seasons shows he’s pretty consistent in what he delivers. .280avg .350obp 60SB 15HR 15 3b
To say it wouldn’t shock you to see him hit .250 from here on out is completely unfounded. The propaganda machine is moving at full force; this is posturing for an inevitable trade and that, IMHO, would be an awful awful mistake.
agree 100%, posts like this scare me.
i’m also bothered by this. matt, how can you completely ignore his 2008 season?
Can we also remember that he is a shortstop who plays near gold-glove caliber defense? I know the game has changed, but this is a franchise whose 2 championships came with Bud Harrelson and Rafael Santana at SS. In other words, the first priority at SS is always defense.
When you then have a guy who will pinball between .280-.300, steal 50-plus bases, hit 15 homers, and be one of the most productive leadoff men in the game…what’s the issue?
I don’t know if people were expecting ARod circa 1999, but he is never going to be that guy. He is not going to hit 3rd or 4th or be the primary offensive weapon on a team….but get rid of him now and I promise you, the Mets will be chasing productive shortstops well into the next decade, wishing they hadn’t.
hear hear
believe it
This is going to be one of the toughest off-seasons in a long time- including the aftermath of the brutal collapses of the last two years. We are all disatisfied with the current state of the team- how could we not be? There are few things that are likely to happen that would make the majority of us feel better about the franchise.
However, the drumbeat of Mets-bashing has hit a fever pitch in the local media and it is only August. There’s nothing worse that watching everybody pile on your favorite team. We eat it up at first but we have now become a national laughingstock and most of us participated in the pile-on to some extent. Let’s face it- this team could be lousy for years if things continue to break (no pun intended) the wrong way. Unfortunately, with major pieces injured until next spring training there is not much that can make us all feel better. Reading pieces like this one just make me sad and anxious. I’m going to have to just stop reading them.
Matt, please tell me another player to have led the league in different categories more than Jose in 4 full seasons — 3 times in SBs, 3 times in triples, once in hits.
When healthy, he essentially averages, 15 HR, 70RBI, .290 AVG, 60 SBs, 35 doubles, 18 triples, 115 runs, 195 hits. You show me another leadoff batter in the NL with close to those numbers (I’m talking in the history of the NL). How much better can you expect?
Reyes is so good, people. Waiting to see what he becomes??? Folks, what he is is an amazing shortstop. Anybody who wants more is absolutely insane.
Did people think he’d hit 30 HRs a year? Did people think he’d hit .350?
He’s an outstanding talent. Being disappointed in Reyes (this year’s injury notwithstanding) is like being disappointed in a rainbow (sure, it looks nice, but did it have to rain?)
The man is and will always be the best shortstop to play for the New York Mets. This kind of talent and performance at SS just does not come around very often.
Is he the best ever? No. But he’s outstanding.
hit it on the head. the guy is a RARE talent, yet people want to run him out of town. Sometimes i just dont understand how this fan base and this organization allows a media which is SO YANKEE BIAS to influence their opinions on players.
Fantastic post, i completely agree, it seems some people are never satisfied.
Last year, Reyes was the second most valuable shortstop in baseball behind only Hanley and ahead of both Rollins and Jeter. This was in both WAR and Win Shares.
I will take that every year from Jose for the rest of his career.
Sure the injuries have been disappointing. But you have to separate that from the performance.
The last 2 years the offense has not been the main problem with this team. It was primarily the pitching. But everyone wants to dump on the offensive players because the pitching has failed them.
Jeter is lucky he plays for the biggest spending team in baseball and, this year, in a bandbox. It inflates his stats and overrates his true value. I hope Olney will write about that one day.
I remember Bud Harrelson, Tim Foli, Rafael Santana, Kevin Elster, Frank Taveras, Jose Oquendo, Dick Schofield, Tim Bogar, and others. Not only is Reyes the best shortstop in team history, it isn’t even close. If he’d stop having brain cramps from time to time (a first pitch popup with men on base gives me hives), he’d be as good a player as you could possibly want at shortstop.
This has been a bad year because of injuries, including Reyes’s. I fully expect the team to be healthier next year (how could it not be?) and competitive. Some of the whiners here always want to blame somebody. They’re looking for a scapegoat for a cloudy day. It simply wasn’t our year. Deal with it. It’s baseball.
I doubt this would even be a topic worth discussing had he not been injured for an entire year, which incidentally is not his fault. I also doubt that had he played this entire season healthy that his numbers would have dipped to the point where any of this criticism would be valid. He’s quite a fine ballplayer that I’m happy to have playing (well not this season) for my team. Jeez…
Let me get this straight, we are essentially saying jose reyes is a disappointment bc he is not the best player in all of baseball which is what these ridiculous expectations, if met, would equate to. The guy is without a doubt the absolute best all around offensive and defensive shortstop in the game. The only guy id concede id rather have ahead of him is Hanley only bc his offense is just mind blowing but he leaves alot to be desired in the field. If Jose Reyes maintains his career norms in offensive categories and continues playing good defense he will be the best Met shortstop ever and arguably the best all around player in team history, not to mention A HALL OF FAMER!!. Matt, I dont know what has happened to you since being taken over by SNY but I dont like it. This seems an awful lot like you are trying to justify a trade which would set this organization back years unless it was straight up for pujols or hanley ramirez.
there’s no way omar is capable of trading a talent like reyes even if he was 100%. omar would get his lunch rooked at an elementary school cafeteria.
sorry, but i’m just SO FRICKING TIRED of all this handwringing over reyes. he OPSed .833 last year. he OPSed .841 during his “MVP” 2006 season. all while playing gold glove caliber defense at possible the most premium of positions and leading off in the order.
you want to worry about someone, worry about our third baseman who hit 8 HR in over 2/3 of a season and scares the crap out of everyone every time he crow hops.
unless there is some hidden story about how he’s openly ignoring his PT regimen, there’s really nothing to say about reyes. hell i couldn’t blame him if he doesn’t believe a word the medical and training staffs tell him. i wouldn’t.
and frankly, i wanna know what is so mysterious about his hamstring injury. isn’t surgery still on the table? do they operate on phantom injuries?
I agree with most of the posters on here, reyes is a great talent and i can’t believe out of everything that happened this year it is reyes people are harping over. We should be more concerned about how the medical and training staff failed him in allowing him to come back before he was ready (the reyes at 80 percent quotes) and re-injure himself and now he is caught in a web of confusion regarding his own medical status. I sometimes wonder if people think he wants to be hurt, its obvious it was bothering him when he did talk about it and i can’t see how he wouldn’t want to be out there with his boys
come on now, can we talk about something important like who will be our number 2 starter next year
Thanks for all the intelligent posts. If nothing else Matt’s piece stimulated some of the best thinking I’ve come across all season.
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