NYP: Chris Young Will Be The Full-Time Left Fielder

Since learning the terms of his signing late last week, Mets fans have been wondering what role Chris Young will play for the team in 2014.  Joel Sherman shed a bit of light on the topic yesterday, with this little nugget of information buried inside his article that discussed the Mets need to be better bottom feeders:

Alderson went to Houston to meet face-to-face with Chris Young. One reason the Mets believe they succeeded in signing him is the GM promised full-time play, though probably not in center. The Mets believe Young is one of those players who needs regular at-bats to succeed, to be closer to the All-Star he was in 2010.

To spell that out for everyone... The New York Mets have agreed to pay Chris Young, a player who hasn't hit better than .250 since the 2010 season Sherman references, who is a career .225 hitter against lefties and is coming off a season during which he managed an OPS of just .659, a whopping $7.25 million dollars.  That's full-time money for what will apparently be full-time duty.

Sherman explains that if the Mets aren't going to add big time free agents, they need to spend what money they do have better.  Its common sense, which Sherman believes the team didn't use when deciding to bring Chris Young on full-time.  Unfortunately, I'm included to believe.

As I wrote on Friday, Young is a major risk as a full-time player.  He is significantly better against left-handed pitching.  Of the 679 pitchers who appeared in the majors last season, only 198 or 29.2% were lefties.  This severely limits Young's chances of full-time success in my opinion.  One is only left to conclude that this is a very suspect signing by Sandy Alderson given both the financial and playing time commitments that have apparently been made.