No, it’s not going to be as bad as 1962, though Ike Davis as Marvelous Marv Throneberry, David Wright as Frank Thomas and Bobby Parnell as Vinegar Bend Mizell sounds about right. The Mets, remember, don’t know what they’re going to get from Davis after his odd ankle injury nor from Johan Santana, who returns from shoulder surgery with two years and $55 million remaining on his contract.
Quote:
Smong the most frustrating aspects about being a Mets fan today – and Mets fans know frustration like the Duggars know procreation – is a simple fact: The cornucopia of middling free agents the Mets signed this offseason will make more money this year than Jose Reyes.
It’s true. Among Frank Francisco ($5.5 million), Jon Rauch ($3.5 million), Ronny Cedeno ($1.15 million) and Scott Hairston ($1.1 million), the Mets handed out $11.25 million in salaries for 2012. The Miami Marlins will pay Reyes $10 million this year. And while one can question both the intelligence and sincerity of a mega-backloaded deal like the one Miami gave Reyes, he will wear a Marlins uniform, not a Mets one, and that alone is damning.
I don't get writers who right something that they immediately realize puts them into a corner. Yeah the deal is backloaded like every Marlins contract and... ?
Quote:
Instead, the Mets – the least-talented team in the NL East by a fairly large margin – spent the winter working on their bullpen. And while it projects as a potential strength, relief pitching is notoriously difficult to peg year-over-year, and the possibility for implosion is almost as strong. Moreover, bullpen strength is almost always an endgame for teams on the upswing. Lock down the starting pitching, fortify the lineup, then bolster the bullpen. The Mets are trying to build from the bottom up, the sort of strategy that works just about never.
Where? In New York? Isn't Epstein trying to do this in Chicago? Where's that article?
Quote:
For as long as he has been in his cash-flow muck, Fred Wilpon has received unfailing support from the best ally possible: commissioner Bud Selig. Wilpon is different than Dodgers deadbeat Frank McCourt, Selig says through actions since he can’t through words; the Mets’ owner was worthy, after all, of a $25 million loan from Major League Baseball that he still hasn’t repaid. But pressure is mounting. More bills are coming due. One source says MLB is likely to let the creditors’ squeeze force Wilpon into considering selling, which isn’t exactly imminent – and could set the franchise back even more. If Wilpon wanted what was best for the Mets, he’d sell now and give the club a chance to avoid the wrecking ball barreling toward him. Instead, this is about him and his family and their team, and so he olés the wrecking ball, knowing its target is the team onto which he so desperately wants to hold. It’s sad really, this proud franchise sullied by a man whose greed overwhelmed the greater good of the thing he purportedly loved. Sounds a lot, in fact, like someone with whom Fred Wilpon was intimately familiar: Bernie Madoff.
Everybody sort of agrees on this but it seems completely separate from the Reyes point and omits plenty of factors that connect the two. The timing of the failed Einhorn deal in the summer said a lot about the Wilpons caring more about their stakes than cash flow that could have made this off-season more plentiful. How is that not there? How about their debt? How about their bond ratings? Passan continually argues that the deal he received the Mets could have gotten it but could they based on what they spent this off-season? And even with Reyes, what would this team win anyway?
And the article is unimaginative as you would expect with a predictable Mets pun and a "haiku" at the end that makes you want to unsee it immediately.
Post subject: Re: Jeff Passan wonders why Mets didn't pull trigger on Reye
Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 6:32 pm
Legend of NYFS
Joined: Fri Feb 01, 2008 3:56 pm Posts: 41097
Meh. Like I said in the general thread that I quoted, the idea that those guys = Reyes is way off and I dont agree with that (in addition to the points labored by Simon, the 2012-2013 Mets were going to be bad had they just allocated all their available money to Reyes anyway...see: 2009-2011 Mets), but the general point of Passan's article - i.e., the Mets are the worst team talent-wise in the NL East, they have really nothing going for them right now both marketing-wise and on-field wise except waiting for things to hopefully improve financially and developmentally, neither of which are sure things - Simon admits is correct. Not sure I get the outrage that this has seemingly sparked.
Also, not sure if Simon is being real and all along he cautioned against a long-term Reyes deal, but its very predictable and kinda damning that the perception has now shifted to "Not signing Reyes was a fine baseball decision" when the overwhelming sentiment was otherwise all season. I know NMig all along cautioned against going over 4 years guaranteed, but here and elsewhere, people were throwing $150m figures out there at points this summer, and most over $100 by the time FA started. Silly to backtrack now when/if national writers call the Mets out on that.
Post subject: Re: Jeff Passan wonders why Mets didn't pull trigger on Reye
Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 6:43 pm
Legend of NYFS
Joined: Fri Feb 01, 2008 3:56 pm Posts: 41097
Oh and on the bullpen comment: I don't get the opposition there. Francisco, we signed to a market-value contract. For some reason we thought it necessary to "jump" on Jon Rauch, who as I've shown, has pretty much been worth the same as DJ Carrasco over the last 4 seasons (following the same pattern of 3 pretty good years followed by a 2011 disaster) rather than try to ration our limited funds better by finding some undervalued setup guys. And Ramon Ramirez is just fine but he's not going to be part of the next good Mets team - the best thing we could've said on him was that he eliminated the need to spend big FA funds on a Jon Rauch type, but we did that anyway.
Regardless, not sure where the opposition to Passan's point there is: bullpens are pretty much the biggest gamble as far as spending money, and typically they are the "last piece to the puzzle" - a bad bullpen can crumble an otherwise strong roster, I guess...but I can't think of the last team to win solely on the strength of a good bullpen and nothing else. I just can't imagine very many teams go into an offseason knowing that a) they can't spend much and b) there is a widening talent gap between them and the rest of their division, so much so that they are indisputably the least talented, on paper, team in their division, and say "Lets attack our bullpen and do nothing else" as an offseason plan and consider that a success. Or, I guess, maybe its a success in that they did not hamper 2014-beyond with any moves this offseason, but that wouldn't be a "rebuilding" plan - its a tread water plan. Which I think is what Passan says, no?
And as far as this is what Theo is doing: no. Theo has been trading off guys with minimal team control left, knowing he's not going to be very good this year, and getting back guys with either more control or minor leaguers. The DeJesus deal is his version of the Francisco signing, in that its designed to fill out a major league roster, but he backs it up with things that you can see are at least designed to set up their future without adding payroll commitments. We haven't really done that at all - as Nitey said, Zack Wheeler is pretty much the only move you can say is like that in the 2 offseasons + 1 season so far of the new regime.
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