If Wilpon valued attendance, he would have re-signed Reyes. Not to say Jose was the main attraction but he was one of the few things between a fan watching the game or falling asleep. Accordingly, why would a fan pay high prices and ruin a day just to sleep at the park?

One of the biggest problems is that Fred thinks it's all about whether he can get through this and come out the other end still owning the Mets.

Everyone else who cares about the Mets and whose last name is not Wilpon or Katz cares about the Mets being good.

In Fred's mind, the Mets being good is secondary, by a wide margin, to his selfish goal of maintaining controlling ownership.

I have to respectfully disagree. I think the Wilpons have always cared about whether the team was good or not. But they seem to follow their GM's and what they think...Omar told them you have to spend...so they did. Sandy is probably telling him that it's best not to go crazy handing out long term deals and building from within, and they will listen to him as well. And if they do come out on the other end still owning the team, and they don't invest back into the team, then you were right.

While I understand this point of view to a degree, I'm not sure why the owner of a business would think any other way at this point.

You may be right. But then why would a customer (us) continue to do business with them?

I agree. And I don't think it was Sandy's idea to come in and do this. It was Sandy's idea how to implement Wilpon's directive.

For an organization that is obsessed with its image they really are on another planet with what the fanbase thinks of the team right now. Same with Selig. Fred really should not speak, he should not be speaking on really any matter after that New Yorker piece ran, because I do not think anybody finds it genuine or helpful or desired. If anything he is continually the theme of the New Yorker piece that is 'woe is me' but this time with in a more deteriorated state, no thanks to him or his family.

You can argue about Chico's point he cares only about their ownership but what can be said about the Einhorn deal falling through if that was not a major factor?

I'm sure the Wilpons have always "wanted" to win. It would be crazy if they didn't.

However, what we want and what we do to achieve what we want are two different things.

In this case, the Wilpons' ability to achieve what they want is severely limited by their money issues.

At the same time, I don't believe for a second that the GM sets the big-picture budget. That comes from the ownership.

I don't think there has ever been a GM in any sport (or an executive in any business), who ever told the boss, "no, boss, keep your money. We'll put out a lousy product for a few years. It'll be painful for everybody, but after a few years of alienating our customers, things will be great. Trust me."

The thing that ultimately undermines the notion that this is all about building from within and avoiding long-term deals is that they could have done all the building from within and signed good players to short-term deals to make the big club more attractive to bridge the gap until the new, improved minor league system began to bear fruit.

Instead, they subtracted Reyes and Beltran and didn't even spend a quarter of what those guys were making in 2011 to upgrade the 2012 roster.

Not the biggest of Wilpon fans by any stretch, but just a few thoughts...
1. Is it out of the realm of possibility that they feel spending $90m is showing they do not want bare bones performance? They could have authorized a $60m austerity budget and ordered Sandy to completely burn it down. $90m still puts them squarely in the upper 40%, I'd imagine. They did not pull a Loria, really.
2. If we parse through news reports, is it possible that the Wilpons authorized spending of up to around $80m for Reyes over 4 or 5 years (not enough, obviously), but that would have put the payroll up a bit.
3. I cannot imagine the Wilpons don't care about winning, on a business level or emotional one. They have to be embarrassed by the attention to their financial business...
4. If their financial lifeblood is in dire jeopardy (real estate and Madoff), isn't it logical to try to hold on to the one item where there is a possibility of a turn around in the near future.

Basically there were 4 moves that they could have made that would have been a tear down
Trade Wright
Not sign Francisco
Not sign Rauch
Not offer Pelf arbitration

With Reyes leaving the fallout from trading Wright would have been immense. The other 3 guys and Dickey I think are here only to be trade chips in July. All make relatively low money nad could be useful to a contender.

Not to defend Loria but if you look at the Marlins, he wins the Series in 2003 brings back most of the team in 2004 adds Delgado in 2005 then "tears it down" in 2006 but he keeps Miggy and Ramirez and has what looks to be a dominant young staff developing. The true Marlin destroyer was more Hyzienga

The Mets won 77 games with Reyes last year and their attendance was only 2.3 million. Its doubtful that with Reyes they win much more than that. It would have taken a lot more than just resigning Reyes to put fans in the seats in 2012.

You have to doubt they will even draw 2.0M in 2012.

Not signing Reyes was understandable. Less understandable is that they really did nothing else at all to make up for it. Not doing a thing to improve the starting rotation is especially mystifying.

In all the years Omar was here, there were some good moves, and some bad moves, but you never got the sense they weren't even trying to compete.