Mets Poised To Enter 2014 With Little Improvement

With the Mets now officially unlikely to sign free agent shortstop and very little openly on the horizon for the trade market, it seems as though the Mets may be done adding players from outside the organization to the big league roster. With that we are left with this as a tentative lineup come Opening Day, courtesy of RotoChamp:

Murderer's Row this is not. Chris Young's numbers from last year are unimpressive, and Curtis Granderson would roughly replace Marlon Byrd's output, gaining a bit in the home run department but losing some average. Aside from those two changes, it's largely the same awful lineup as last year.

After the Granderson signing, there was an excitement about this offseason that is now all but dead. The Mets, even with everyone's new, adjusted expectations, have come up short. Nobody hoped or expected them to be in on Robinson Cano or Tanaka, but some attainable talent seems to be passing them by. Stephen Drew would be a marked improvement over Tejada, but the Mets have seemingly let that market pass them by. An unwillingness to sign even a two year deal for a talented player to ensure you get him is unconscionable and displays, to me, a lack of a serious effort to compete this season. Drew is an affordable, reasonable upgrade at one of the biggest gaps in the lineup. He needed to be added to this roster.

The Ike circus is it's own story. Once linked to a trade for Ryan Braun, then unable to get enough of a return for a team that was very publicly and very desperately trying to trade him, he looks set to return to the infield for this middling squad. The lineup boasts two batters who hit over .251 last season. Look forward to another sub .500 year barring any more upgrades.