The Mets will play their first spring training game of the season on Monday, and their first game in front of fans since last March.
Monday’s game will, of course, be without Trevor Bauer, who chose to go to the Los Angeles Dodgers over the Mets.
Sandy Alderson spoke with reporters about the pursuit of Bauer, saying it was “aggressive.”
“We were aggressive in our pursuit, but also, very happy with where we are currently,” said Alderson. I wish him well in L.A. I think he would have added a dimension to our team – maybe a third or fourth dimension…
Bauer has constantly made headlines regarding his social media usage, even recently getting into a Twitter war with Noah Syndergaard.
“Hard to know how that would have turned out,” said Alderson. “We thought we could manage it. Maybe that was naive, we’ll see… I’m not here to say ‘wow, we dodged a bullet.’ I’m here to say we made an effort, we thought he would help our team, we understood what the risks were associated with some of the social media stuff…
“We did a lot of homework on his social media, as I mentioned earlier… We went through a lot of that, and that’s not to say there weren’t still risks associated with it… We talked extensively to the agent about what we thought would be necessary at the outset in terms of taking responsibility for what had happened in the past and taking some responsibility for what might happen in the future… I did think we could manage it as long as we were communicating with him and being sort of attuned to what was going on. We felt we could manage it, it’s possible we wouldn’t have been able to, but at this point, we don’t have to worry about it.”
Alderson said there were internal discussions with women regarding his social media usage – Bauer notably exchanged barbs with a woman on Twitter a few years ago.
“We had internal conversations talking about his social media presence and how that might differ from others and their social media presence. Whether that presence was directed at a particular group of people or it was just generally aggressive,” Alderson said.
Despite missing out on the defending National League Cy Young Award winner, Alderson is a fan of the roster he has down in Port St. Lucie.
“I was happy with where we ended up,” said Alderson. “He made a choice. Now, maybe I’m even happier with were we ended up, given the fact we were able to add someone like Taijuan Walker and others. We’re in a good spot. I’m happy with the way the offseason went generally, and not unhappy about losing out on Bauer or others.”