I keep telling you to find something better to do with your summer, and today I took my own advice: a friend offered me and my kid a ride to Rockaway Beach to swim and drink on another friend’s convivial porch, and I said yes pretty much instantly. Frozen drinks, friends and the beach? Screw Jon Niese and screw worrying about the pathetic wreckage of the New York Mets.
It was a good choice: Just a cursory look at the after-reports showed me the Mets had made idiotic mistakes on the basepaths, failed at the fundamentals, committed horribly timed errors and given up home runs. Once again. To the Marlins, once again.
Yeah, I’m sure sorry I missed this.
Besides, I’d done my time: Joshua and I were there for all 20 innings and all six and a half hours on Saturday. It was kind of entertaining, in a sick way — once a third “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” loomed as a real possibility there was no way we were leaving, and it was a nice day and we had good company. But a marathon like that is a badge of honor if you wind up winning; if you don’t, it feels like a dunce cap. The Mets’ spellbinding incompetence with runners in scoring position — it was quite literally the worst performance in franchise history — was tough to take during the game, but even tougher to reflect on afterwards.
Today the Mets were arguably worse — less futile, perhaps, but more disaster-prone and more determined to play with their heads up their orange and blue behinds. And after the game some of those heads finally rolled: Ike Davis, Mike Baxter and Rob Carson were sent to Las Vegas. (Before you get excited, their replacements are supposedly Josh Satin, Collin Cowgill and Josh Edgin. Oh goody.)
Davis desperately needed to go down and have some coach slash through the Gordian knot of his approach to hitting, so I’ll spill no more pixels there. I’m not sure what Baxter did that was more glaringly inept than most of his teammates, and no Mets fan should ever let him buy his own beer, but he didn’t do enough right in 2013 to have me or anyone else leap to his defense. It was painfully obvious Carson wasn’t ready, but I don’t understand why he was on the roster in the first place — what’s it do to a young player’s confidence when his manager asks a second starter to toil for 100+ pitches instead of putting him in? Even Dallas Green turned to Mike Maddux before Terry Collins turned to Carson.
So that’s three guys down — four if you count Rick Ankiel, another guy who never should have been here to begin with.
It’s a start. But the Mets need to keep going.
Most obviously, I don’t understand why Jordany Valdespin’s still here — either play him every day or send him down. And Valdespin’s far from alone. The number of Mets for whom a demotion would be unjust is perilously small: If your name’s not Wright, Murphy, Harvey, Parnell, Niese or Byrd, you have no reason to squawk if someone’s preparing a pink slip or a 51s uniform with your name on it.
However much we’d welcome it, though, the Mets aren’t going to make like the judge in The Untouchables and swap the New York and Las Vegas franchises. (The 51s would lose bushels of games too.) So what can we hope for?
A trade — a move for a big bat. There’s no guarantee the free-agent market will solve what’s ailing the Mets, and there’s really no guarantee that the Mets will be able to spend free-agent money even if they want to. (Howard Megdal explains why here.) There have been rumblings about a franchise-remaking swap being in the works for a while, and I hope those rumblings are right. It needs to be done, even if it means giving up a painful number of good prospects, even if it means overpaying.
It needs to be done because the fanbase is in a perilous state. Saturday was a Matt Harvey start, on a beautiful day, against a supposedly weak opponent. When Harvey was flirting with no-hitters in April weather, we detected the buzz in the park and let ourselves dream about what Citi Field might sound like with Harveymania at work in the summertime.
The answer? It sounds empty.
There was nobody there by the end on Saturday, but there was nobody there at the beginning either. The fans don’t care, and that doesn’t make them crazy: It’s no fun watching a phenom lose 1-0 or 2-1.
As Mets fans, we’ve gone from angry to apathetic. We loathe the team we want to love … and increasingly we’re tuning them out, which is even worse. We’ve realized that yes, we can hitch a ride to Rockaway Beach.
I don’t know a single Mets fan who trusts the Wilpons or their surrogates to tell the truth about their finances, or who believes that the dead money coming off the books after 2013 will be replaced. Opinion is more divided about Sandy Alderson and the front office. I continue to think Alderson’s plan is sound but he’s been undermined by ownership’s ever-changing stories about when the coffers will be refilled.
But though my opinion hasn’t changed in that respect, it has in another: I think Sandy’s out of time.
It might have been different. Going into this season, it wasn’t crazy to hope that Davis would build on the second half of 2012, that Daniel Murphy would keep hitting and get better at second, that Lucas Duda’s eye for the strike zone and prodigious power would outweigh his scary defense, and that Ruben Tejada would keep evolving into a sound defender and a high-average hitter. Murph’s done his part, but Davis and Tejada have been disasters and Duda is confused at the plate and wretched in the field.
With three guys seen as complementary players performing indifferently or abysmally, the lineup has turned into a horror show, with the last eight weeks of baseball impossible to watch. And that’s eliminated Alderson’s already-limited room to maneuver. The fanbase can no longer wait until Opening Day 2014, or the offseason and potential free-agent moves. Something has to be done very, very soon to convince us that the wretched, contraction-worthy team we’re no longer watching isn’t what we’ll get in 2014 too. Starting pitching isn’t what’s ailing the Mets, meaning Zack Wheeler isn’t going to turn the tide. Of the Mets’ top offensive prospects, one doesn’t have a position and the other can’t stay on the field. If free agency isn’t the answer for the Mets’ hitting woes, that’s all the more reason to remake this lineup through trades.
I know it’s not much of a blueprint. That’s not what I’m good at it. All I know is that something has to change. A lot has to change. And it has to change quickly. Sending Davis down was a start. It better not be the finish.
#DoSomethingElseThisSummer.
Bless you boys. Understatement of year that you guys are doing god’s work, recapping this crap.
I’m in the minority that thinks the Wilpons will spend money on free agents. The problem is who will be available this year. Shin Soo Choo? Be still my heart. Ellsbury? Ugh.
We’re screwed because the players we counted on have failed, time and time again. Jason Bay set this franchise back years. Johan’s fragility has bollixed up the rotation. Everyone thought 1B was set for 10+ years, but Ike is (was) one of the worst players in baseball.
There is precious little to look forward to. And the Mets will continue to not be a viable rooting option for young kids as they choose their team, usually for life. When we didn’t outright OWN New York (from inception through mid-70s, the 80s-early 90s) we still split the city around 50/50. Until now. We are looking at a long, slow spiral into Nets/Islanders no-one-gives-a-shitsville. Man, this sucks.
Jason, your writings are usually insightful and enjoyable. But you’ve gone the Full Isiah on this one. Well, patience didn’t work, let’s try stupidity! Trade for a big bat? Right, because we’re one piece away from winning this thing. Sacrifice the future to win 10 more games the next two years? “A franchise-remaking swap … needs to be done, even if it means giving up a painful number of good prospects, even if it means overpaying.” What the hell is a franchise remaking swap? Bundle all our prospects for … what? To plug some of our holes? So that maybe we can finish 3rd next year? There is no way this team wins in 2013 – 2014. Or does franchise remaking swap mean trading Wright, Murphy and Niese for prospects? That at least makes some sense, but doesn’t jive with your complaint that we need to mollify the fan base. Yes, everything sucks. But as Isiah Thomas proved, making things worse is rarely the answer. I guess Sandy Alderson could put together his own investment group to buy out or bail out the team. Short of that, the whole ownership and money discussions are way outside his sphere of influence. All he can do is what he’s doing. Build up the young talent and not further constrict his future payroll flexibility. Come on Jason, surely you agree with this comment more than you agree with your own post. On a side note, I suspect watching Star Wars instead of Star Trek has softened your brain. But even Star Wars teaches that we cannot let fear and anger lead to destructive stupidity.
“Full Isiah” is an awesome term.
I agree. A trade is not gonna do it, unless we go “Full Astro” instead of “Full Isiah.” We’re pretty close to it anyway. Trade Wright for some prospects? That’d be tough to swallow, but as DAK142 put it, we’re fast achieving Nets/Islanders no-one-gives-a-shit status anyway (also known as 1978-82 Mets replay). Whoever is in charge has always been afraid of the total ground-up re-build that this team still needs.
I still wonder what it is that Aldersons fo team actually does. Wait around for contracts to expire. Promote and demote minor leaguers at will. Develop left hand hitting players who can’t hit over.250. Organize fire sales. I mean, sounds like a cushy job to me.
TC is not helping. He let his catcher stay in for 20 innings. His players continue to look lost in the field and at bat. As usual the bullpen is overtaxed and the starters never complete games. Disarray.
Sandy isn’t getting fired. They are not eating the last year and a half of his contract unless he becomes embroiled in some Steve Phillips type of scandal. Besides, Sandy getting fired means that a) Jeff is the de facto GM once again, with a puppet in charge, and b) they get on Bud Selig’s bad side, which is something Fred won’t (can’t) allow to happen. If they don’t let him spend any money, what’s he supposed to do? What would his successor do under the same circumstances?
There’s been 20% roster turnover in a week. And that’s just the beginning. By the end of the month it could be 33% or more, and still more to come after that. We ain’t seen nothin’ yet. But no team ever cuts absolutely everybody all at once. Not ever. Anyway, “D’Arnaud can’t stay on the field” is not really fair; the injuries he’s suffered the last two years are injuries that any catcher could have suffered. Catchers just have a high rate of injury, that’s all.
Anyway, I had no idea you were at the game, I was there too (with Greg), for the first ten innings before I had to run and catch my plane back to PDX!
But what has being on Selig’s good side gotten them? If anything, he’s been an enabler, bailing them out instead of putting them in a position where they’re forced to sell.
Absolutely agree. Having your owner be cozy with Selig is a disaster for a fanbase. Just ask Marlins rooters.
For a fanbase, maybe. For Fred, no. This is it for him. This is all he gets to take to his urn with him. If Selig told him, “I’ll sign a contract stating that nobody but Wilpons can own the Mets for the next hundred years, if you’ll take this knife, wander into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and remove all your skin in front of a school of hungry sharks live on camera,” he’d do it. Wouldn’t even have to think about it. (Jeff, on the other hand, would never bleed to death for this team; he’ll probably sell the minute Fred’s ashes turn cold. And then we can be like the Dodgers or Angels and have all new owners to hate! Maybe twice!)
And let’s face it, if being a cheapass or being stupidly profliagate with payroll could get an owner removed, half of MLB owners would be out of there. McCourt got bitten because of a very public, embarrassing, and expensive divorce trial, which was the last straw for an MLB owner fraternity that already didn’t trust the guy, and which necessitated the team being sold because his ex made the case that he was worth a billion dollars (half of which she was entitled to by law), and almost all of that was tied up in the team. It’s not just that Fred is Selig’s BFF, it’s that the other owners (who are Selig’s boss, not the other way around), respected him because of his seniority. But that dies with Fred, who in any case does not look well these days at all.
Little Jeffy will never sell either . . . no matter how much he makes from the deal, he could never replace this toy that allows an idiot “lucky womb club” member such as he to play act like a successful, well respected businessman
The Mets are farther away from a contending team than any time in their history, not counting 1962 possibly. Free agents will not work, as they are usually busts, or short-lived for the Mets. They may not have the money to pay them anyway. The farm system is barren like never before, except for top prospect Ike Davis down in Vegas. The players we have here now have a great knack to choke (Murphy ground ball yesterday). The thing that worked in 1980 was SELL THE TEAM and have new owners hire a dynamic GM. I liked Sandy’s logical, tortoise approach at first, but it didn’t work. EPIC FAIL.
Sorry, but the late 1970s Mets were the most hopeless and unlovable team in franchise history. (People actually got a kick out of the 1960s laughably bad team–even Don Draper made fun of them last night.) The late 70’s Torre/Grant/de Roulet Mets would have killed for the attendance figures this team gets. And ownership was even more of a joke. The current team is up there, though. And it’s getting closer all the time.
I lived through the late 70s…even at their worst, they had more than the 4 decent players they have now…and they had some kind of farm team…at their lowest point in 1979, they were only 5 years away from contending. This franchise today is more than 5 years from contending. I would sign up for it right now if the 2018 Mets played like the 1984 Mets.
Having lived through those late 70’s-early 80’s teams, I have to say the current version is definitely reminiscent of those sorry teams. The cheapskate owners, the punchless lineups, the horrid bullpens, the revolving door with the AAA affiliate, the empty seats, they’re very, very close to those teams right now if they’re not already there.
I always remember 1979 as being the low point. None of the teams between 77-83 were any good but that ’79 team with its massive roster full of nobodies and never-weres really stood out as being especially terrible. I rememeber they went into the last week of the season with 99 losses and went on a 7 or 8 game winning streak to avoid 100 because of course they did. Sort of like how this 2013 group was the one to finally sweep the Yankees.
I agree with most of the above. Howard Megdals column made for very depressing reading. I have great hope for our forthcoming starting pitching staff, however if we cant get any offense, then what’s the point. I think a massive concern has to be Saturdays attendance, apathy around a Harvey start really indicates huge problems within the fanbase & maybe will act as a wake up call? I think that Sandys pros JUST about outweigh his cons but he(and TC) must be on a very short leash now? Day games are my best opportunity to watch live, but the weekend garbage has meant I will dipping in and out of Thursdays game,as opposed to watching the entirety,as I normally would. Frustration just doesn’t cover this sorry saga,which unfortunately appears to have many more miles to run!
The real issue is not free agent signings or creative trades. Alderson has chosen to take the SLOWEST route he could….rebuild through the farm system and stress player development, which usually takes 5 years minimum. And the KEY to this strategy is how well the team drafts in June. PERIOD. There are no answers on the free agent market that can turn the Mets into contenders in 2014 or 2015. It all truly hinges on player development and drafting results. What are people’s thoughts on the drafts under the Alderson regime? Met fans that we are, we are better off rooting for the kids in the minors at this point, like Binghamton and ST. Lucie, and Savannah, where our future lies…
I’m far from being an expert on farms systems or amateur talent, but from what I read from those who consider themselves qualified to assess such things, under Alderson, the Mets’ pipeline has improved from rock bottom to middle of the pack. Obviously only time will tell, and baseball’s history is filled with can’t miss prospects who missed badly, but right now nobody drafted by Alderson’s team projects as a high impact player.
And when Alderson was hired, weren’t we hearing that one of his skills was identifying and acquiring players who performed above their slot? Moneyball and all that? Instead we’ve gotten baseball’s Dollar Store…cheap prices for cheap crap.
“Josh Satin, Collin Cowgill and Josh Edgin”…to paraphrase Jackie Gleason, That makes a WORLD of difference.
I liked Baxter, but the more I saw him, there more I noticed he’s one of those players who for some reason wind up getting credit for being a much better player than he actually is.
Must be those 4 RBI’s he’s already accumulated in only one-third of a season. That’s major wow factor.
I had more fun coaching my 10 year old son’s travel baseball doubleheader on Sunday and then helping to run a practice for another team he is on. I watched bits and pieces of Saturday (while watching my older son’s travel team win a game)…..to say I don’t really care this year is an understatement.
I have never been more fed up with this whole Met fan existence. On Saturday we tuned in for 7 innings, i took a nap while my husband hit a bucket of balls, we had a leisurely dinner and still had time to watch the end of the disaster. Now i am done. Kaput. Trading in my METSFAN license plate because i am finally too embarrassed to drive around with it.
Kudos for being able to write something, anything about this pathetic bunch. It will never change under Wilpons. We have gone from little brother to second cousin twice removed in NY baseball.
I agree with the principle of this, the current Mets 25 is lousy with a few shining lights, and the entertainment product is woeful. I’d rather see a team lose that plays like it gives a shit about the uniform as opposed to being vested in themselves. Saturday was riveting simply because every time you thought they couldn’t be worse, they actually outdid themselves.
Trying to be balanced about this ; I really do enjoy reading the farm reports at the moment – all the affiliate teams are playing great ball and there are some really interesting prospects in this system. Whether or not they’re drafting better is yet to be seen, but I get the sense that these teams are well managed, and that we are getting value from some of the mid level draft picks – you can’t hit on them all, but guys like plawecki, taijeron, boyd, montero, de grom, leathersich, last years brooklyn pitchers etc are definitely being ‘developed’ which is something I felt didn’t happen in the five years prior to Sandy – and I feel the farm is top ten, not middle of the pack. Reason purely being that its on the whole (apart from taijeron) age appropriate guys winning age appropriate games at the right levels of the system.
One thing however that I don’t understand, is how Sandy claims ‘management’ is not to blame for the performance of the front 25. They definitely should share ‘the blame’. Warranted or not, TC is now a lame duck manager because of this team, and instead of Ike listening to “everyone” tell him how he should be changing his swing – his hitting coach should be the guy and the only guy, and he is not good enough, sack him and find a better guy, because Ike is not the only guy on the Mets who can’t hit a lick right now. TC should be keeping people OUT of Ike’s ear – christ I feel bad for Ike, I saw some footage of him as a rookie smacking two home runs against San Fran on SNY the other day – and if you see his stance and approach then which was easy and smooth and yep possibly flawed, compared this this half-squat take a shit at the plate he’s doing now – the change has not been small to put it mildly – someone has “helped” the guy fuck his swing up, you don’t take those types of decisions yourself.
How can management be ‘absolved of blame” and for it only to be the players fault. It’s management’s job to get the best from the resources it has, even if it has shit resources, players under-performing is DEFINITELY symptomatic of culture and leadership.
I apologise for the language. I just want to see the team succeed, I want to see the young guys succeed and I want to feel confident that ticket money I invest is part of that success. I can’t help but feel with Ike for example, that somehow we’ve let a great hitter be a lost hitter.
It’s true that the farm teams are all above .500 and appear to be doing well, more than I could say for them before Alderson’s regime when Met farm teams typically sucked.
This is going to take a long time. It’s easy for us to be impatient but they’ve needed an organizational rebuild for many many years. That farm system under Minaya and “Take Your Shirt Off” Tony Bernazard was a DISASTER!
Going into this season, it wasn’t crazy to hope that Davis would build on the second half of 2012, that Daniel Murphy would keep hitting and get better at second, that Lucas Duda’s eye for the strike zone and prodigious power would outweigh his scary defense, and that Ruben Tejada would keep evolving into a sound defender and a high-average hitter. Murph’s done his part, but Davis and Tejada have been disasters and Duda is confused at the plate and wretched in the field.
The problem with this statement, and the Wilpons’ stewardship of this franchise, is that “hope” is not a plan
Exactly…it’s all based on “if everything goes right,” but the last time something went right (6/1/12 aside) was Endy Chavez’s catch. With this team you can automatically assume that about 95% of it will go wrong.
[…] Sandy Alderson is finally making some moves, but are they too conservative? Should Zack Wheeler come up sooner than the road trip in Atlanta, for instance? Should he send down the rest of the team? […]
I sort of give up,but it would be somewhat helpful if the non-Wilpon–owned media would do a 24/7/365 barrage of shaming the Wilpons into selling the NL’s lone NYC-based MLB franchise before they become the new St. Louis Browns.
Agreed, I was just think about why Megdal is the only guy regularly writing about the Wilpons’ house of cards canard . . . even the Wall Street Journal writes about it occasionally, but virtually nothing from the NY papers
NY Times writes about the Mets finances occasionally, the Post’s writers couldn’t string together financial information if their lives depended on it, and the Daily News is a paid subsidiary of Sterling Mets or whatever the Mets franchise calls themselves legally.
jason,
like you i had an opportunity to hang with friends who were passing through town at gametime. by the time they needed to leave the ‘thets (shorthand fot Pathetics) were down 8-4 and i had seen all i needed to see. no lead, no coughing it up late. no hapless at bats, poor defense, baserunning blunders…unlike saturday, i spent no time i’d regret never getting back. had a nice hang with the friends, and spared myself any needlessly predictable frustration on what should be a day of rest. something to build upon.
The Mets have completely jumped the shark. The roster is threadbare, the pitching lineup scares no one and even the farm ,outside of the pitching, has no real positional prospects. Given the absence of the ability to spend, how will this team do well in the future? The pitching will get better but the defense and hitting will be awful.
It all starts with NO Home field advantage. You walk into the stadium and they celebrate a player with absolutely NO METS CONNECTION. I love Jackie Robinson but why create an atrium for a player who never wore a Mets Jersey in his life? Let the Dodgers celebrate the former DODGER’s career and life. Then the stadium itself is devoid of Mets signage. Originally the back wall was painted orange and black SF GIANTS Colors. Luckily they corrected the colors issue but still the stadium lacks that authentic home field advantage. Also, the ownership bleeds Dodgers BLUE…why not sell it to an ownership group who will do what is best for the METS not for the Brooklyn Dodgers-lite team that Fred Wilpon has tried to re-construct. I am completely divorced from the Mets this season…they have become unwatchable. Thanks Fred Wilpon for making this season a snoozefest.
you’re a good writer, but your baseball acumen is shit.
the fuck is sandy supposed to do with no cash and no farm system, inheriting a team with no talent?
I thought Sandy’s plan was sound enough, particularly given the lack of Wilpon cash — which of course isn’t his fault. It’s too early to say for sure but the last few drafts have seemed wise, and the Mets have been helped out by the new limits on draft compensation. The Dickey and Beltran trades have helped restock the farm system, which isn’t bad now. Painful though it was to see him go, I agreed on not matching the Marlins’ insane FA offer to Reyes. And the remaining Omarpalooza contracts are gone (minus deferrals etc.) after this year.
Sandy’s bullpens have been poor and the bench players signed haven’t done much, but I’ll withhold criticism since I didn’t disagree with those moves when they were made. (The only one that really had me shaking my head was not resigning Scott Hairston, and so far Marlon Byrd’s been much better in 2013 anyway.)
As I said in the post, where the plan’s fallen down is the complementary players failing to develop. If Davis, Duda and Tejada had taken steps forward the way Murphy has — which wasn’t a crazy thought — the Mets would have a much better record and the makings of a pretty solid lineup. I don’t think that collective failure is necessarily Sandy’s fault, but I do think it’s forced his hand: D’Arnaud has been hampered by injuries and isn’t a transformative player anyway, and Flores doesn’t have a position. The result is there’s insufficient help coming for the lineup from the farm, and between a lackluster free-agent crop and the Wilpons’ uncertain financies, the free-agent market doesn’t seem like the answer.
So that leads me with two reasons for the same strategy: bundle up bluish-chip prospects in a trade for an established bat. It needs to be done because the other pathways either haven’t worked or are uncertain; and because the fanbase’s despair has reached a dangerously toxic point.
Acumen seem slightly less shitty? If not, hey, I tried. Thanks for reading either way.
Hi Jason,
There is a difference between building up a team and replenishing a perceived barren farm system. Bring new life into the minor leagues does take at least five years but rebuilding a club with the talent that the Mets had after the injury riddled 2009 and 2010 seasons does not.
And one can do both at the same time as Sandy Alderson admitted so today when he said a team has to focus on winning now and in the future. His solution? Get an infusion of better players from the outside this coming winter.
That was not the solution we were told the past three off-seasons. We were told that to build a contender one has to do it from within, wait till the young core develops and then take the next step to fill in the remaining holes by free agency or the trading of other prospects.
They could not do both like he is professing now.
Why can we do that now and not before when our team is in worse shape than it was when Sandy inherited it? Young pitching is what we got today, however, we have only three position players of merit and none of strong suit anywhere in the system other than perhaps d’Arnaud – Sandy has admitted that on numerous occasions.
Yet now he is going to spend? We have too many holes to do that now. Now is not the time to change the course, now is the time to continue even more with building from within and slowly developing the young players.
And now that is not the course he wants to follow. Now he wants to obtain free agents, finds there is no problem with having kids come up from double-a and skip triple-A altogether (unlike before when he said one should not be rushed and take those slow steps up the the ladder).
There is a difference between wasting money on bad contracts and not spending it at all. In 2010 Sandy said the removal of certain financial obligations would give him the ability to obtain better players that the roster being committed to at the time did not allow him to do. He did not come on board talking about re-building. He said he was not coming in to do things like Oakland. He said he would not have accepted the job if it meant money ball.
Now with the fan base nearly totally lost he tells us that it is just as important for an organization to focus on trying to win NOW as it is building for the future.
Sandy was brought here to keep the Wilpons from filing for bankruptcy, not to build a team. We’ve seen how the operating budget for the entire organization has been drastically cut. To believe that the roster would be immune to such downsizing would be unrealistic.
And if he was indeed sincere about using the limited resources he had on the future, then Stankwitz today would not be the 45th selection in the country picked by the Red Sox – he would have been signed by the Mets last year when he was number 75 (one of our two second round picks) but wasn’t because the Mets refused to negotiate the $40,000 less in slot money that he was seeking.
Sorry Jason but many were conned into believing that Sandy had a vision and got off track. If he stayed on track today, saying we still have to be patient and let the youth further develop, then it would be different and I would concede you were right. But that is not the case.
As stated in the posting, the biggest failure of this season has been the failure of players that they were counting on to be building blocks for their future. No one was expecting All Star level performances from Ike, Duda, Tejada and Gee but at this point, they were expecting some measure of solid major league production from that group. Except for Gee in his past couple of starts, the four of them have been nothing short of a complete disaster so far this season. Add Buck reverting back to what he truly is after a hot first 3 weeks and you have the makings of a total train wreck.
The owner in Miami may well be a scam artist in his own way, but does anyone here doubt that the Marlins will win yet another championship before the Wilponzi-owned Mets do?
So they make the changes, who plays now? Are they actually going to play Satin at 1B or have him get 4 AB’s a week as a pinch hitter with 1 start and when he goes 1-14 over 3 weeks say he can’t play and send him down? If they play Satin then Turner (who probably should have started for Wright to give him a break once in a while) continues to ride the bench.
Edgin arm is shot, just like every lefty we have every year from overuse.
What they should do: Let Satin play every day.
What they will do: Leave him to rot on the bench like Valdespin and Lagares, so the only thing they find out is that he’s gotten older.
Where’s Frank Catalanotto when you really need him???
Where have you gone, Val Pascucci?
Nothing wrong here that Mike Hessman couldn’t fix.
I saw him last year in spring training. A monster! Where is he????
Watching the Belmont, there was a rich guy from Queens, Mike Repole, who owned three of the horses entered. He is a billionaire from inventing Vitamin Water. His silks and his necktie were orange and blue.
You know what I’m dreaming…
I have no faith at all that the money coming off the books next year will be going anywhere except to Sterling debtors and/or Wilponian pockets.
However…
Here’s what the Wilpons should do to send a message to the fan base that they mean business: extend Harvey NOW, buying out his arbitration years — at a minimum — and a couple of free agent years.
As everybody said above, a trade for a “big bat” — a Stanton, an Ethier, a Carlos Gomez, etc. — does no good at this point, even to mollify the rabid among us.
…sigh…Carlos Gomez…
This is what I want. I want the Wilpons to incur such a financial crash that they are forced to sell. I thought the Madoff thing would do it but they are still hanging on like grim death and dragging the rest of us with them. They have rapidly decreasing attendance and even rapidly less interest in watching them on TV. Even bringing Casey Stengel back from the dead could not animate the fan base.They don’t even like the Mets. They only love the ghost of the old Dodgers. Just go quietly and pocket the proceeds from a new owner!
I just wonder how long this will take? After the Seaver trade and subsesquent gutting of the franchise, it took seven long years to climb out of the mire. Likewise, it took years for the Mets to climb out of the early 1990’s hole they dug for themselves (although that hole, deep as it was, wasn’t due to the team not spending any money). Will they be fielding another AAA roster next year? How about 2015? When does the awfulness end?
Though this didn’t occur to me at first, somebody did make the comment that an general manager should not put down his players by name (Duda and Tejada not being considered core players) even if it was the truth and then putting down a lot more others by saying they don’t follow the hitting approach by going deeper into the count he insists on.
My own feeling is that when Sandy shows us that he played between the lines on a high level, then he can tell ones how to hit.
While hard to prove why, long time Met fans seem to know that players who come to the Mets as stars or solid players often bomb. No need to rehash the list. Then you have guys like Oliver Perez, who had talent and the Mets could never harness it and he had to go…he is now one of the best lefty specialists in the AL. That should brighten your day. BTW, The Mets are hitting .226 and Jason Bay is hitting .225.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/perezol01.shtml
I’m of two minds about what should happen.
What I think most likely will happen: a trade for Ethier (which is a disastrous idea; not only is he burnt out, he’s a head case — but he’s a telegenic burnt out head case) then, next winter, a kind of last winter’s Red Sox-lite approach, maybe headlined by somebody like James Loney or Carlos Gomez.
Sandy’s not out of time. He inherited a team with a gutted farm system and no money to spend on free agents.
He (or anyone else who inherited the mess), had to rebuild the team from the draft up, and pick up whatever scrap was left on the FA heap.
Any attempt to rush prospects up from A or AA would be damaging, and would have virtually no effect on the 2013 team.
This organization was never destined for a quick fix – they didn’t have the money for it, and if they did, they’d only end up in another hole in a few years.
Right you are. This is going to take a long time, like it took after the Seaver trade in 77 and it took after the Worst Team Money Could Buy finally bit the dust in the 90s. It’s just the way it is and maybe Jason is right. Tune out, do something else with the summer, whatever. This is just gonna be the way it is for awhile.
Here is what I worry about. The Mets have been bad for five years. Will they still be a sub .500 team in 2016, 2017, 2018? Could this go on another decade? As inept as this organization is, the sad part is the thought that it could.
Somerset Patriots update: 32-16, only 1 game out of first place in the Atlantic League. And two of their players are leading the league in homers, RBI’s,and BA.
Go Patriots!
Mock me all you want, but it’s nice to root for a ballclub that’s local, winning, and not the Yankees.
And wake me up when the Wilpons sell.