Zobrist had narrowed down his choices to three teams: the Cubs, New York Mets and Washington Nationals.
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“This team showed us that we’re pretty close, and the goal is to a win a championship”, said Mets assistant general manager John Ricco, speaking with reporters here at baseball’s annual winter meetings.
Losing out on Zobrist is a blow to the organization, but it’s not the end of the world and NY doesn’t have to do anything rash in response. The Mets are obviously a prime candidate for that, as their team is young, like the Royals, and are willing to spend much more money than Kansas City is.
He went 3-for-6 with two doubles in Game 1 of the World Series to set the tone early for Kansas City.
“I’ve talked to his people, I haven’t spoken to him directly, but we’ve spoken to his people on several occasions over the week”, he explained.
Even though the Mets are talking to Cespedes’s representatives, it may be for other players not just the Mets key acquisition at the deadline previous year.
Free agent Ben Zobrist is four years older than the man he would be replacing at second base, Daniel Murphy.
But a maneuver outside the Mets’ control superseded that, and that’s why Zobrist wore a Cubs cap as he spoke to the media Wednesday afternoon at the Gaylord Opryland. Zobrist is a two time All-Star and has history playing the middle infield and outfield.
“You do look at certain skills that do age better than other skills, and I think he has some of those”, Ricco said.
“I was very serious about going [to the Mets]”, Zobrist said. But in the meantime, there’s no reason for the Mets to pursue Murphy just because they lost out on Zobrist; it would be a rash move that they need to avoid. They do, however, have the Andrew Friedman connection with Zobrist.
The New York Mets also had tried to reach an agreement.
Zobrist had a.276/.359/.450 slash line last season with 13 home runs and 56 RBIs.
“We put a nice, hard push to acquire a really good player, and we’ll see what place he chooses to play, but the effort – we put a good effort in place…”
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Details of the contract are not yet known but we will pass them along as soon as they are made available. “So I think we’ll be fine”.
