Mets Roundup: John Buck, Jose Valverde, Daniel Murphy

The Mets had one of the busiest offseasons of any team, trading away Cy Young Award winner R.A. Dickey, as well as signing third baseman David Wright to an extension. The team was involved in the news today, so let's look at why,

The Buck stops here?

The Mets acquired catcher John Buck as part of the aforementioned R.A. Dickey trade, but it looks like the catcher might not even make it to Opening Day with the Mets. The team could reportedly trade the catcher to make room for Travis d'Arnaud, the Mets' assumed catcher of the future. Buck has already been traded twice this offseason, so it would be a bad streak of luck for the veteran.

I think the best move for the Mets (and the likely one) is keeping Buck until d'Arnaud is past the deadline that makes him a free agent a year earlier. It should be an interesting situation to watch as the team is not particularly deep at catcher.

No Francisco, no problem

The Mets found out they might not have closer Frank Francisco for a while, but the team did not see Jose Valverde as a suitable replacement. I think this is another example of teams realizing that they do not have to pay a lot for good closing, as typically you can replace the position from within rather cheaply.

The Mets could go with internal options such as Bobby Parnell, Jeurys Familia, and Jenrry Mejia. It sounds like they will just go with Parnell, which seems to be their best option.

Murphy suffers injury

Daniel Murphy has been through quite a bit in his career. He has played all over the diamond, suffered both major and minor injuries, and has hit all over the Mets' line-up. For the first time he is coming into Spring Training knowing his role, but he found out today that he will miss up to a week with a minor side injury.

This should not be too big of a deal, and I certainly hope for Murphy's sake that he can recover from this quickly and continue on with his first normal Spring Training.

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Another Mets-related read from over at Amazin' Avenue, Sam Page talks about Sandy Alderson and how he finally has "his" team. I certainly agree with Sam that Alderson's truthfulness and bluntness are good characteristics, as opposed to the old regime which tried to sell players that simply were not good. It will be interesting to see how the Mets spend their new-found payroll flexibility.