Mets Release Adrian Gonzalez

The Adrian Gonzalez experiment is over; the Mets have released the veteran first baseman. And now they have a real chance to evaluate Dominic Smith.

Gonzalez got off to a slow start this season, hitting just .203 in April. But he bounced back with a .289 May. But a .111 June was all the Mets could take. Gonzalez ended up batting .237 (18 points higher than Jay Bruce) with six homers (three more than Jay Bruce) and 26 RBIs (11 more than Jay Bruce). Not to pick on Jay Bruce, but just making the point Gonzalez was relatively not terrible for the Mets.

But clearly Adrian Gonzalez was not the future of the Mets. Smith might be. So this give the Mets a chance to see what they’ve got in him. And if they don’t like what they see, then the Smith-Peter Alonso decision becomes an easy one.

Anyway, Gonzalez did not cost the Mets much — just the major league minimum. So it was a low-risk, potentially high-reward move. And like so many of those Sandy Alderson moves, there was no reward at the end of the day.