We don't know yet if they're a .500 club, ergo the sentiment to table til the end of the year to see where we finish.

As for Omar...good riddance. If the principal goal of a GM is to build a championship team, he failed in nearly every regard except for his ability to make splashy moves. His farm system was poor - even now with all these guys starting I disagree w/ the premise it was because of any reasoned approach by Omar and his staff...and given that we don't quite yet know exactly where these guys will finish it's impossible to absolve Omar of the fact that he left the organization in as bad shape (perhaps worse) than his predecessor.

As for the $$$ coming off the books, you're spot on. That will give Sandy the room to maneuver next off season, and should help accelerate the team's turnaround...putting the next GM (DePodesta?) in position to build a winner (perhaps).

Cheers.

Jdawg - my argument here is that none of those guys, including Parnell and Davis, have given anyone reason to reconsider the job Omar did. Of the bunch perhaps Davis offers the most hope - but he still has as much chance turning out to be Mike Jorgensen as Gil Hodges. The blind squirrel and nut theory still abounds, but hope does not equate to methodology...and too many of his signings were done with fingers crossed.

Perhaps, but his initial plan was inspired and made the Mets relevant; his signings after the first collapse were desperate and ill-considered (and likely limited by ownership). The only reason for Bay, Castillo and Perez is because his credit card was maxed out (and justifiably so)for others he may have wanted...

Bottom line for me is that Omar left a better farm system for his successor than his predecessor did. When Omar took over they had Milledge and Humber (who had Tommy John surgery when Omar took over), nothing beyond that. Milledge turned out to be a big time bust and Humber never developed while with the Mets.

One of Omar's biggest failings was his faith in old players. The Castillo deal wouldn't have been bad if it wasn't for more than a year, or two (max). The age and bad knees were a known and this was a guy whose game needed his legs.

Ollie was controversial because of his inconsistency. But I don't think anyone expected that he'd disintegrate in his late 20s without ever suffering the type injury that ruins pitchers. Most people thought the worst-case was that he'd continue as a guy who mixed brilliant games and stretches with wild games and meltdown games. We never saw the good Ollie, even a handful of times, once he signed that deal.

Jason Bay is similar. At the time, you could debate if he was the right fit or if the money should have been allocated differently (speed guy? Different position?). But no one said "this guy's going to struggle to hit 10 bombs in a season and seemingly never drive in a run in a big spot".

My main criticisms of Omar is that the farm system could have been handled better (the draft and the way they pushed young players) ... and also toward the end of his reign he could have done a better job in roster management on the MLB level.

But criticisms of Jason Bay seem like complete hindsight... no one could have predicted his complete fall from grace in the same way we couldn't predict the complete collapse of Robbie Alomar. You got to just chalk that up as mostly bad luck.

He made a bold move for Johan Santana .... in the same way he made a bold move for Pedro Martinez. He wanted to get that ACE at the top of the rotation and he took a chance. I find it hard to fault him for that ... It's hard to win a world series without getting an ACE and that was all our mentality at the time - we wanted to win a world series.. Of Course we all would love to develop our own homegrown ACE ... but besides finding a great, young GEM of an arm..there is a lot of development time and luck involved.

Oliie and Castillo were moves that are worth some criticism ... but i think these signing don't even come close to the debacles of most GM's. Carl Crawford i could have told you was horrible signing based on the contract even if he was healthy.. no way he was living up to that contract. John Lacky, Dice-K, trading liriano/nathan, trading adrian gonzalez ... these are huge mistakes.

Ollie and Castillo are small potatoes.

I know we hate to play the "IF" game .. but IF Jason Bay played close to his career NORMS and he was the middle of the order bat that he was expected to be ... and if Johan Santana didn't get hurt ... Omar probably would still have a job right now.

Of course injuries happen to all teams ... and my big criticism of Omar at the time was that there were no young players ready to step up at the time when the team was struggling with injuries. So like I said ...i do pass plenty of blame on Omar but I just don't get this mission to destroy Omar's tenure and not give him any credit for anything. The team was in terrible shape when he took over ... and they ended up winning quickly based on the bold moves he made including some really good under the radar type moves. He put his stamp on the team .... and they won 4 out of 6 years as GM including one really great team.

We have a new GM now ... I wish people would be more focused what he is trying to do to put his stamp on this team and make it his OWN.

I for sure thought Bay was the perfect fit. Nobody knew he would forget how to hit, and at the time we needed RBI guys and HR threats in the middle of the lineup. Had we gotten the Jason Bay we thought we were getting, it would be a non issue, however, we got something far different.

Ollie was a disaster, and was never to be trusted, and him getting that deal was a terrible job as a GM, and a finer point in the argument that Omar wasn't great at handling the money that was available to him.

Omar was great at going out and getting the big time FA, but he wasn't good at filling depth, nor did he draft particularly well. And like i said above, he didn't do good things with the money he had available all the time.

I don't really care if he makes it his OWN. I doubt he does either. I hope he can make it a winner.

This is what Sandy had to say about the homegrown lineup:



I know some people were expecting when Sandy took over to see some kind of house-cleaning, where he got rid of most of "Omar's" players, etc. But fortunately, I think Sandy seems to be smart enough and confident enough to realize he doesn't need to be that petty. And he doesn't mind giving some credit to the previous GM.

If enough of the young guys in the pipeline can really play, maybe all Sandy will have to do to build a winner is add a couple of big FA acquisitions, at which point I'm sure some will argue that "any GM can spend money". But if that's the easiest path to winning, it's still the right path.

Maybe Omar's Mets and Sandy's Mets will end up looking a lot alike. So what. Do we really care if some of the credit is shared?

That quote just moved me on the credit side of the ledger with Sandy...

Upon further review post-last night, and after watching the last few days of minor league ball too, Omar said "Nah, they're yours, Richard Lynn Alderson."

I have no problem with shared credit .... but I think there are some that want to give Omar no credit.

Ultimately this is not Omar's Mets ...we can judge these prospects that came from his farm system but this most likely would not be the team he would have put together if he was still the GM. Maybe he would have traded Reyes ...or signed him. Traded Duda, Kirk, Thole ...etc.



I agree

OMMMMAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

without Omar we never sign Beltran.