Mets lose Michael Bourn to Indians

Michael Bourn will not reign supreme in New York. The speedy outfielder will take his talents to the Cleveland Indians, after he signed a four-year deal with the club late Monday night.

Bourn, 30, was involved in a long give-and-take negotiation with the New York Mets who spent more time worrying about losing their 11th pick in the MLB draft if they had signed Bourn. According to MLB rules, a team that signs a free agent and has to pay compensation, shall lose a draft pick.

Losing the draft pick was a poor excuse by Sandy Alderson, who failed to get anything done for this Mets franchise this off-season that could make this years team at least competitive. Now, New York will be stuck with an outfield of Lucas Duda, Mike Baxter and Kirk Nieuwenhuis in 2013. Not exactly an outfield that is going to inspire many Mets fans this season.

The only move this front office made this off-season with any substance, was to trade the team's best pitcher, R.A. Dickey, to Toronto for catching prospect Travis D'Arnaud. That is it ... unless Mets fans want to get pumped about the signing of reliever Brendon Lyon. The jury is still out on the D'Arnaud acquisition. He is supposed to be one of the best young hitting-catchers in the minors; so the Mets are going to have to bring him up this season in order to keep the fans calm.

While the pickings have been slim this off-season, and while Bourn is certainly not worth a four-year, $48-million contract, Alderson is running out of excuses for not improving this baseball team with proven major league talent.