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What Would It Take

The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that the Mets and A's are discussing possible compensation for Rick Peterson. According to the article, the Mets have NOT yet received permission to negotiate with Peterson, but have had talks of the "informal" variety. The A's appear adament about shipping Terrence Long out of town, and the article suggests that the Mets would part with a low-level prospect for Long and Peterson. Long currently has about $5 mill remaining on a four-year, $11.6 million deal, and is a marginal major leaguer at best. Billy Beane must have been drinking some of Mr. Wilpon's Kool-Aid when he signed Long to that deal.

Long's only half-decent offensive season came in 2000 when he posted a 788 OPS with 56 XBH. It's been a precipitous drop-off since then. To borrow from Avkash's statistical prose (which I am rather fond of):

2000 age 24 288/336/452 with 43/77 and 56xbh (18) in 584ab
2001 age 25 283/335/412 with 52/103 and 53 xbh (12) in 629ab
2002 age 26 240/298/390 with 48/96 and 52 xbh (16) in 587ab
2003 age 27 245/293/385 with 31/67 and 38 xbh (14) in 486ab

While he's only 27 and is just hitting his prime, he shows no indication that he's about to turn into a productive hitter anytime soon. He has apparently clashed with A's manager Ken Macha (according to T.Long himself, 20 of the A's 25 players don't want to play for Macha either), though his numbers under Art Howe weren't exactly world-beating (they were admittedly several steps up from his current production). He looks to me like an expensive version of Timo Perez, though Timo's three-year splits against righties are actually better than Long's.

Barry Zito gives Rick Peterson a lot of the credit for helping him, as well as Jason Isringhausen, Billy Koch, and Keith Foulke. I'm not a proponent of burning large piles of money, but if Peterson is all he's cracked up to be, throwing a few bucks away on T-Long would be one of the best off-season moves the Mets can make.